Yeah I'd still shitcan the nest and then put stuff out there to scare them off. Sometimes something as simple as a pinwheel blowing in the wind is enough to keep even domestic birds away. If nothing else works there's always the option to have a discrete wildfowl dinner.
If she had been sitting I would recommend just not eating them unless you like crunchy duck fetuses in the morning. You absolutely have to destroy the nest or she will keep coming back to that spot to lay. Chances are even if you destroy it she will try to make another there or close by. The pool is too big a temptation and she is in the mood to brood. Does anyone have a dog you could borrow for a few days?
Yeah pinwheels could work, assuming you have wind. My domestic birds are really weirded out by random things like that. I cannot carry any kind of pipe, pole, or long handled tool around them without them running for the coop.
I'm told our large animal vet scoffs at Dr. Pol, but I have to tell you, if we didn't enjoy his show I would have been flipping out yesterday. For the first time, one of them had a reaction to a medication where, seconds after I injected it, he dropped to the ground and then had temporary paralysis in his entire back half. He struggled to get up, seemed kinda out of it for a moment and had I not known better, and seen this happen on TV, I would have been running for the phone to call her. Instead, I talked to him, rubbed the injection site, and gave him a handful of oats from the trough ( he wasn't so far out of it he wasn't trying to eat ). In less than a minute, he was up on all fours like nothing happened. Ivermectin is known as a "hot" medicine, it has a burning sensation when you give it. They've flinched before, but nothing like this ever happened before. Even though I knew what it was, it was still kinda scary.
@GTE this site had some more ideas about keeping ducks out of your pool. Some seem dumb like duck off spray? Wtf is that. The tip about pool toys and an automatic pool cleaner might work for you. https://dengarden.com/pest-control/10-Simple-Tips-for-Keeping-Ducks-Away-from-Your-Pool
Some new arrivals this weekend. I haven’t counted, but with two hens on nests it’s bound to be around 20: This morning I spotted a wild turkey hen coming into the yard again. Judging by my Tom’s behavior, she was presenting to be bred when I saw her laying in the grass. The hen took off, and when I let him out he started dry humping the air. Poor bastard.
Holy hell, 22 hatched out of 24 so far. One egg still possibly hatching and one poult found dead. That’s an excellent hatch rate.
Fuckin ducks. I separate the males daily because they harass the hens too much. And what did I see, but a female mating another hen in the tub today. The girl on the receiving end is my friendliest girl. She has the worst feather damage on her head from being mated by everyone. Maybe all those pillbugs she gets in the morning will do her some good.
I've been dealing with some loss of my turkey poults, which I believe to be a simple matter of failure to thrive. Even if I find them still half alive and rewarm them, they don't make it. Survival of the fittest I suppose. Now to sell them, which is a pain in the ass because there's a lot of people who can't read the online ad and want me to drive a ridiculous distance to meet them and/or try to low ball me on the price.
I'm really excited, I think one of the welsh harlequin hens is actually, legit broody. The black ducks started to a couple times but it never stuck. WH's are supposed to be good about raising young. I read this, and now have some work to do. https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/broody-duck-what-now.75251/ There are a ton of eggs in that nest and most need to be removed. I need to prepare the space. My sister and her family are visiting in a month, and we might have some itty bitty ducklings for them to see. Fun!
This morning I removed a buttload of eggs from momma duck's nest and left a dozen after marking them with an X. Apparently it is common for the other flockmembers to keep laying in the broody's nest. Here's the broody welsh harlequin. I call her Margo in my head.
It pays to candle along the way. We started with 12 eggs and are down to 5. Some were simply not fertilized. The one I removed today exploded when I cracked it into the compost bin. Luckily the yuck missed me, but I definitely felt pressurized air crack on my hand.
I was gonna raise these six poults to sell the hens and butcher the toms: However with feed prices continuing to skyrocket I’m not so sure I will. I was paying 13.99 a 50# bag of layer pellets for the chickens. That alone is an absolutely crazy price. It used to be a 100# bag wasn’t that much. Anyhow, it’s now 15.99. Thankfully I got rid of some chickens and will consider getting rid of some more. But the turkeys get a higher protein feed, which is historically more than the layer. Heritage breeds take 2 years for the toms to reach ideal butcher weight. There’s no way I’m gonna feed them all Winter at these prices. So I’ll sell the poults, and am thinking about selling the breeding trio as well, though that’s less likely. Before I thinned the flock, a local restaurant bought 20 dozen eggs from me at 3.00/doz and wanted all I could provide. But at these feed prices, I lost money. It’s insane.
Those are beautiful birds, @walt . Yes, feed is expensive here too. That's part of the reason I price my duck eggs so high, $6/dozen. Purina all flock feed was $16.99 a 50lb sack until a few months ago, now it is $19.99. This last time I mixed 2 50lb sacks of the all flock with a 50lb sack of a feed store grain blend that's only 8% protein iirc. The all flock is higher protein % than the adults need, since it is suitable for growing babies and adults alike. That grain blend was $6.99 a 50lb sack. So it brought my average price down, and my ducks are still eating bugs outside, too. I've been steady at 6 eggs a day with 6 hens so it doesn't seem to have caused them any harm to have a little less protein. I'm about to see if our favorite Mexican place will let us place a flyer for eggs. All my customers have been Hispanic but no one has bought recently, I need new buyers.
I didn't realize feed prices had gone up so much. I don't really pay attention to their food pricing as I"m not trying to recoup cost with selling eggs or anything, but now that you mention it, it was like $13.99 a bag when we first started and now it's $17.99. My chickens seem to get half of their diet from eating the food I provide and the other half with weeds and bugs from the lawn. Can your birds not free range @walt ? We finally finished fencing in the entirety of the backyard so they've been loving life going out most days and just chilling. They especially like this patch of mock orange bushes that line one side of the fence and they go under it all the time to bathe and scratch around for things. The other day I thought one of them had kicked the bucket because they were almost upside down laying there. Turns out she was just REALLY enjoying the dust bath. Do you guys supplement their food with treats? I give all the chickens a half deli container scoop of dried mealworms a day and they get most of the scrap veggies/fruits that we don't use. We also have a field in the back that's overrun by weeds during the summer and we go back there and pluck out a bunch and toss them in their coop. They are the tall hollow ones with really big leaves, the chickens seem to enjoy those as well.
The chickens free range a good part of the day, particularly in the orchard which is why I think there’s been no caterpillars in the trees this year ( we never sprayed them ). I give them scratch grain to encourage them to, we’ll, scratch around under the trees. I also dump old hay from the goat pens over there for them to stir up and break down rather than overload the compost pile with. Until now I’ve been okay with losing a little bit of money selling eggs to mostly friends. But with prices soaring, I’m not gonna lose THAT much money. It’s not worth the time, the mess, etc. I still get about 5 doz a week and that’s fine. The feed consumption has dropped considerably.
I have an enclosed area for the ducks. In the garden off season their run is open and they wander and forage for bugs in the entire garden. Their wet poo attracts many bugs and they find lots of things to eat in their area. The ducks that got out last week actually punched down the bug problem (pillbugs and earwigs) pretty well in less than a day and I might let them do that mid summer routinely once plants are mature and can handle their abuse. They trampled a few things and ate a couple tomatoes but it was worth the tradeoff. They are fed greens and occasionally things from my kitchen. Trimmed leaves from the veggie patch are given except tomato branches which they do not like, and weeds from the yard like dandelions and thistle. Feeding them weeds is another reason I do not treat the lawn with anything. I used to buy dried mealworms but they are pretty pricey and the ducks seem to lose their shit over zucchini leaves, so once the last bag ran out I haven't bought more. I would buy more for ducklings to train them to trust me early on. I have collected pillbugs from traps and fed those to the ducks.