chickens and ducks on the urban farm

28 08, 2020

New Neighbors

By |2020-08-25T20:41:15-05:00August 28th, 2020|Friday on the Miller Farm, Miller Farm Friday|2 Comments

A Blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara


The chicks quickly outgrew the brooder. I didn’t fully understand the ramifications of this until they started dying.

Rachel took one look at them when she was visiting us and said, “they are too crowded.”  The question became where to put them.

The chicks that were obviously roosters went into the rooster pen.

Rachel suggested putting the hens in with the ducks since that part of the pen was secured against escape. And there is a small coop in there to lock the chicks up at night.  I was concerned that the ducks would bother the chicks.  Rachel assured me the ducks would be afraid of the chicks.

Sure enough, Rachel was right.judythemorgan.com

The chicks stayed in their corner…

judythemorgan.com And the ducks stayed in theirs.

So far everyone is getting along.  The coop has been repaired so when they start bothering each other, we can move the chicks out into the big yard and safely lock them up at night.

Another successful move on Miller Farm.

22 02, 2019

Ducks Take Two

By |2019-02-22T07:16:41-06:00February 22nd, 2019|Friday on the Miller Farm, Miller Farm Friday|0 Comments

A Blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara

We used to have ducks. We got them when they were ducklings and they all turned out to be male.  This was not good for our farm so they went to live in a pond with lots of weeds to eat.

We have ducks again.  This time there is a male and a female.

I named them Lucy and Ricky.  Lucy has been laying eggs since the day we got her.

We put them in a separate run. They kept escaping which necessitated chasing them around the chicken yard. They get along fine with the chickens so we’ve just let them cohabitate.

I do have to search for the duck eggs among the hen eggs now.

The other problem is they make a mess of the chicken waterers.  I’m not sure how they do It but there is now a layer of mud in each chicken waterer every day.

I was really frustrated by this today and then I found a beautiful purple feather.  Then I found another one.

It turns out Ricky has purple feathers under the black ones.

It makes me smile.  I guess we’ll keep these ducks for a while.

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