There's a part of raising animals that every farmer or rancher has to contend with. Hell, we all do: death. These
little fuzzballs of duck arrive, flown in from my favorite duck hatchery, Metzer Farms, in California, and we gently take
them from the boxes that have been their home for 48 hours, dip their bills in water, then food, then water, then place them
into the brooder to test their legs for the very first time, to run free in what must seem an immense world right then.
By the time all 75 are placed, the vision is one of an aerial view of LA freeways at night. Streaks of activity and
fluttering and motion. You can't help but sit and watch for a while, no matter how many flocks we have started.
You watch and start to notice there's always one that's smaller, slower, faster, bigger, more active, less lethargic,
utterly exhausted, mighty hungry. One has a stripe, another has three. It's hard to pull away and get with the day's
other chores.
Over the days and weeks, they grow and they do that fast. By the time they're eight weeks old,
they're almost indistinguishable from the adult flocks. For as long as they are the youngest flock, though, they're
"the babies." The second oldest/youngest flock is crowned "the teenagers," and, yep, the oldest
flock is known as "the adults." Real creative.
For the first time on our farm, we have a big flock of adults
and those adults are in molt, meaning they're done their first season of laying. The teens have been laying for
the last month, ready to take over for the molting adults, but now we have a choice to make. Do we we kill the adults
and turn them into something else or do we farm them out, trying to find homes for them where they can do good back yard work,
eating bugs, weeds and grass and laying eggs when they molt is over?
This morning, Amy came by and took six of
the adult girls. She has three drakes and wants some ducks to go with them. Technically, ducks are female . .
. well, ducks. Confusing, yes, so we call them hens so others aren't confused. At any rate, Amy was dropping
her husband at the airport at 5 am, so me, being a farmer, thought that since she was nearly in my neck of the woods, should
just come on over and get her new family additions.
Last night, rather than put these girls in the coop, I put
them in dog kennels with a nice bed of straw. For a moment, I was a little bit sad, one of the girls I gave up is from
a very small flock I picked up mid-summer 2006 to replace some girls that had died from West Nile Virus. She a beauty, though,
and relatively calm. I know that she'll like her new life well, with six of her girlfriends and three new boys to
quack up with.
This seems to me a less than traditional approach to culling the flock, I admit, but I guess the point
of our farm is not to be traditional at all. We are trying to find new solutions to old problems and take new approaches
and new challenges. Why shouldn't our girls move on to backyards to help with the lawn care or to teach young families
a small lesson in raising farm animals? Why should these gals end up in the freezer simply because they need a few months
off from laying eggs?
I may yet have to take more drastic and final measures to the adults, but before I
make that call, I can use the new technology of email and Craigslist to see whether there are other Amys out there, other
backyards where my girls can go on.
Just hope I don't have to get rid of the rest at 5 am.
Good morning, owls.
