DUCK!

Duck Breed Trial

Last season, we raised two types of ducks, Muscoveys and Silver Appleyards.  Practical Farmers of Iowa sponsored the research and we helped produce the report highlighted on this PFI blog post.  If you wish to see the full report, you can take the link here.   In the end, as much as we enjoyed the Silver Appleyards, we may not focus on raising them as much as the Muscovey's after we ran the numbers.  But, we also admit that a single trial is not sufficient because one must learn the differences of each breed so you can maximize their strengths and minimize the weaknesses.    At present, we have three Muscovey and four Appleyard ducks on the farm.

It's a quick quack blog post!

 The white birds in the picture are our Muscoveys.  These birds tend to be, on average, a bit bigger than the Appleyards.  In fact, the male Muscovey (who is named Diggle) is quite a bit bigger than all of the other ducks.  It is common for the drake Muscoveys to be significantly larger than the females.  Another interesting fact - Muscovey's are 'quackless' ducks.  They do make hissing noises, but they will not quack.

On the other hand, Appleyard ducks enjoy discussing everything and anything.  Recently, they've taken to standing in a line in front of Rob and telling him how he could improve his caretaking techniques.  Unlike the Muscoveys, the drake (in this case he is named Dippet) is not much bigger than the females.

Both were laying eggs until recently.  But, since we weren't separating them, we aren't completely sure which eggs belong to which birds.