chercat: août 2017

Ducks Molt Too!

When you raise chickens, you become accustomed to a flock of molting chickens each fall. The shorter days signal to their bodies to drop their old, broken feathers and grow in a nice new set before winter arrives to help them stay warm. It's easy to spot a molting chicken. She will have bare spots starting at her head and neck and moving down her body, with sharp quills poking through. With ducks, its not as obvious, with your only sign often being a run full of feathers. But ducks molt too!
However, the molting process in ducks is a bit different. While the pattern is the same - from the back of the head, down the neck, across the body and then towards the tail - ducks tend to molt faster than chickens, with the entire process taking only six weeks or so. Some chickens can take months to completely finish their molt. Since (wild) ducks depend on their feathers to fly, they need to be able to regrow their feathers more quickly.

Males Molt Differently Than Females

Ducks also molt differently depending on whether they are male or female. Female ducks generally molt only once a year in the late spring/early summer. This coincides when she would have ducklings to care for. She'll use the feathers she's shedding to literally "feather her nest". She'll drop her feathers, but keep her nice soft down.
Since a molting duck can't fly, this keeps her grounded while the ducklings are small, and then equips her with a brand new set of feathers when the babies are ready to start flying. Since neither she nor the little ones can fly at this point, she will lead them into the nearby water if there's a lurking predator (this is why wild ducks build their nests and lay their eggs by the edge of a pond or lakeside).

The Juvenile Molt

By about 6-7 weeks, ducklings grow their first set of feathers. Both male and female young ones look the same at this point. But several weeks later, they will drop those first "juvenile" feathers and grow in feathers colored differently, depending on their sex.

The Nuptial Molt

Male ducks of nearly every breed are more brightly colored than the females. The males (drakes) molt at least twice a year. In the late winter, they drop their winter feathers and grow in some colorful new feathers for the spring mating season in order to impress the ladies. This isn't a full-on molt usually, just a partial one, and is called their "nuptial" molt.

The Eclipse Molt

Once mating season is over at the end of the summer, the drake will undergo an "eclipse" molt and his fancy feathers will drop and be replaced with plain, drab camouflage feathers (this is helpful for keeping them safe during hunting season from both human hunters and predators!). This time of year the male will look very similar to the female duck. Unlike females, the males usually retain their wing feathers, so they can fly year round as a defense against predators.

The Simultaneous Wing Molt

Many ducks also go through a third molt called a "simultaneous wing" molt. It is during this molt that they regrow new wing feathers, so they're grounded and unable to fly for about a month (although of course domestic ducks can't fly anyway, so it's irrelevant to them). Most other types of birds molt by losing only one wing feathers at a time so they can still fly if they need do.

What Should you Do to Help?

You really don't need to do anything differently while your ducks are molting, but during the molting season, they will eat more - needing additional protein and energy to grow in new feathers. There are lots of sources of plant protein that you can add to your ducks' diet when they're molting to help them along. Your ducks will love extra rations of basil, dill, parsley, and tarragon! Your ducks will also enjoy meat, fish or shellfish scraps, feeder fish or dried insects. I don't recommend feeding them cat food since it's formulated for cats not waterfowl, but you can switch from a layer feed to a grower or meat bird feed, which both are a bit higher in protein.

Reduction in Laying

Egg laying will slow down or stop during the molting season. Unlike chickens though, who generally stop laying during the fall molt and then take a break until spring when the days get longer, our ducks will start laying again once they're done molting.

Signs of the Molt

You will likely notice fluff on your ducks' bills when they're molting, lots of fluff and feathers in their swimming pool. They might be a bit more subdued than normal, or look a bit moth-eaten, but the most obvious sign that your ducks are molting is that your coop and run will look like there was a pillow fight, early snow fall, predator attack - or like one of your ducks exploded!

The above information applies to wild ducks primarily. It's very hard to find much information about whether the domestication of ducks has had an impact on their molting habits, but from observing my own ducks, they do seem to molt more than once a year, in fact I believe I've used the term "perma molt" when it comes to our ducks! Either way, they need to grow in nice new feathers each year, just like chickens do. They just do it a bit differently.

For more information and advice about raising backyard ducks, visit my Duck Care Guide.Further Reading:https://www.omlet.us/guide/ducks/duck_health/moulting/http://urbanhomestead.org/136/http://www.newagrarian.com/2004/03/raising-ducks-the-second-year/http://www.ducks.org/conservation/waterfowl-research-science/understanding-waterfowl-the-amazing-molt
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Take a Peek at our Week - Aug 20th - 26th

We've just started picking ripe tomatoes from the garden, but already I can tell that fall is in the air. The nights are cooling down to near 40 degrees, so I potted some of my smaller basil plants and brought them inside and clipped others and have them in water on the kitchen windowsill. My basil always is the first to succumb to the cold, and I'm not quite ready to give up my caprese salads for lunch yet!We've harvested all the beets, potatoes and garlic, but still have peppers that need to ripen, along with corn, pumpkins and butternut squash. The chickens have started molting, the ducks are also molting, and egg production has slowed considerably. The Littles are in the coop with the big girls now and everyone is sorting out the sleeping arrangements. We're so enjoying the cooler nights - it makes for such good sleeping! Monday we did another photo shoot for my new book, which was so much fun. I can't wait to see the proofs from that. Oh, and I baked a blueberry pie using local Maine blueberries. Enjoy this peek at our week.

If you enjoyed these photos, I hope you'll join me on Instagram so you don't miss a single thing all week!
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How Will the Eclipse Impact my Chickens and Ducks?

Never has a single event prompted so many questions from readers as the impending solar eclipse which will occur on Monday, August 21st, 2017. Mainly, chicken keepers have been worried about how the eclipse will affect their flock, concerned about their chickens possibly going blind from staring up at the sun, and to a lesser extent, curious about whether their chickens will not lay on that day or go to roost during the eclipse.Since most chickens will never experience an eclipse during their lifetime, much less a total eclipse of the sun, this certainly is a unique situation and I didn't have the answers to the questions I was being asked. Even doing some googling, it seems there's lots of speculation surrounding eclipses since they aren't all that common. And as we all know, any type of scientific research is kind of sparse when it comes to chickens!Fun little factoid: I actually had chickens back in 1979 when the United States experienced its last total solar eclipse! I do remember making some kind of DIY eclipse viewing apparatus with my Mom out of a shoe box, but don't remember how our chickens reacted. I even called my Mom last week to ask her, but she didn't remember either.So I started doing some digging and found some answers to your burning (pun intended!) questions. Bottom line is: I wouldn't worry too much. If you have to work tomorrow, I wouldn't recommend locking your chickens up in their coop all day. If you're home, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try to get them into the coop for the duration - which incidentally will be under 3 minutes of totality - although the entire event can last a few hours for many.

If you normally free range however, I would suggest keeping your chickens in their run tomorrow. One thing that might happen is that the unexpected darkness could panic and confuse your flock, and they could become disoriented and possibly lost. And of even more concern, short as it will be, the darkness could possibly rouse some nocturnal predators, such as owls, which could pose a threat to your flock.

Question: Will my Chickens Be Blinded? Answer: Not Likely

Chickens, and other animals both domestic and wild for that matter, don't generally spend much time staring up at the sun. So there's little chance that they will choose the moment of the eclipse to stare skywards and harm their eyesight. Ducks, on the other hand, do often turn an eye to the sky, and there's no telling how the wild birds will react (I've read the darkness might even draw out bats), which could cause our ducks to turn to look upwards, so I think I will be ushering our ducks indoors during the eclipse. Just to be on the safe side. I figure there's no sense taking chances. We will also make sure our dogs are in the house along with our cat. Again, no sense taking chances when it's so easy to take this simple precaution.

Question: Will my Chickens Go To Roost? Answer: Most Likely

As we know, chickens automatically head to bed when it starts to get dark, so I have every confidence that the chickens would just put themselves to bed as the skies started to darken. Ours tend to head into the coop during a rainstorm as well, so I was guessing that the chickens would take care of themselves and hop onto their roosts at the onset of the darkness. Of course, it will be so short, that they'll just get settled when it will get light again and they'll re-emerge, likely scratching their heads at how short that night was!
My theory seems to be sound, at least according to an interesting story I read about Thomas Edison. In 1878, the year after he invented the phonograph, Thomas Edison traveled to Wyoming to view the eclipse and had set up his telescope in an empty chicken barn. As the story goes, when darkness descended, the entire flock of chickens descended on Mr. Edison as they frantically returned to roost!
Photo Credit: National Park Service

Question: Will the Eclipse Affect Laying? Answer: Not Likely

The short period of darkness probably isn't long enough to have any effect on your chickens' laying cycle. Plus, this time of year, with shorter days and the molt season starting, who's getting many eggs anyway, right?

So that's what I found out about Monday's eclipse and its potential impact on our flocks. After the event we should know a bit more about how it applies chickens thanks to a study being conducted by the University of Missouri that involves cameras set up in a hen house. I would also love to hear your experience and observations after the event!

Not sure if you're in the path? Or what time you should be worried about all of this? Here's a great map for you!

Further Reading:https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/eclipse-who-what-where-when-and-howhttps://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170819.htmlhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/27857989?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contentshttps://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/how-does-solar-eclipse-affect-animalshttp://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/animals-react-total-solar-eclipse-august-space-science/http://www.audubon.org/news/how-weird-will-wildlife-get-during-2017-solar-eclipsehttps://www.theverge.com/2017/8/19/16171952/solar-eclipse-animal-behavior-hippos-bees-bugs-bats-birds
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Take a Peek at our Week - Aug 13th - 19th

As some of you know, I spent last weekend in California doing a Fall Chick Days tour at Tractor Supply stores in Gilroy and Turlock which was sponsored by my friends at Manna Pro. It was a great trip - my first time in California! - but I was happy to come home. The garden is still producing tons of veggies (our tomatoes have finally started to ripen and no one loves sun-ripened tomato sandwich more than I do!), but egg production has ground to a virtual halt due to the shorter days and a few girls who already have started molting.

There's a definite chill in the air - in fact it got down to 47 degrees one night, so I brought my basil in side just in case...basil is always the first casualty in the herb garden I've found and I wasn't taking any chances.

I spent most of the week relaxing and working on my next book. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the deadline is actually DECEMBER, not September as I had originally thought....whew! That gives me a bit more breathing room! Anyway I did a bit of crafting, painting and building this week and was seduced by a table of reduced price herbs at the local nursery, which of course had to come home with me!