Duck Tragedy

and what I did next

I know that raising any kind of animal opens the door for tragedy, heartbreak and frustration. I had been lucky so far. I have incubated 4 batches of ducklings and haven’t lost a baby duck yet. I have raised chicks and ducks not incubated by myself without any losses as well. Until recently our total losses in almost 2 years of having poultry was a single chicken that jumped over the fence and was probably killed by our neighbors dog - but I wasn’t even home that weekend so that loss wasn’t in my face.

This fall I slaughtered 3 male ducks and 1 rooster. I learned how to process them so they could provide for our table and it was a really incredible learning experience. The rooster was being territorial and aggressive to my 2 year old and we just had too many male ducks. It was the best option and I want my kids to understand the circle of life and that all of the meat we eat comes from an animal.

In the middle of January everything changed. I recognize that I had become a complacent poultry owner. I got lulled into a false sense of security by other people in our neighborhood having free range chickens in their yards, and by almost 2 years without incident. I went out back one morning after taking the kids to various school/daycares and was befuddled to see our neighbors German Shepard in our yard. Now, Max is a very sweet - albeit rather under trained - dog. The first time we introduced him to Mickey (our older lab) they did NOT get along.. so most of my befuddlement came that they all (Max and my 2 labs) seemed to be playing together. I did a panicked look around and saw all 6 of my chickens calmly roosting on the woodpile - completely unfused about the extra dog in the yard. Big phew. I called Max and walked him back over to my neighbors and handed him off. No issues.

I went back to my yard and felt that something was off. My ducks were clumped super tight and on first glance it looked like there were fewer of them than there should be. At this point I had 12 ducks, 3 males and 9 females. I started walking my backyard and my heart absolutely dropped. I saw not one, not two, but 3 piles across my backyard. Walking to them I saw they were in pristine condition… minus heads. My first flush of emotion was to call up my neighbor and be like “your damn dog killed my ducks - my dogs have been in the yard with them for years with no issues, and now they’re dead” but I checked that and touched base with my husband. He pointed out very reasonably that if they’d been killed by dog they’d be damaged — it was probably an owl or maybe a mink. The ducks were all frosty also, they’d been down most of the night. Eventually I did find a 4th dead duck - one of my males, I think he’d been stunned or maybe had his neck broken by the owl and he had been played with by the dogs unfortunately. I don’t think any of the dogs killed the duck, but the opportunity to play with a dead duck was definitely too sweet of a chance to pass up. I think that’s probably what pulled Max over into our yard, I did also find that the fence was structurally unsound and he probably just walked over.. didn’t even need to jump. So I’m glad he was there so it showed me I needed to reinforce the fence. That day I did a temporary fix on the fence - tying it up to some trees so it’s at least upright. I was down to 8 ducks, 2 males and 6 females. My ratio was intact, but numbers depleted.

The next day I noticed I was down another female in the morning. Just vanished and gone. I made plans to lock up the ducks in the enclosure that night - something I hadn’t done in over a year. When I came home from picking kids up at daycare that day I realized we’d had another duck fatality.. right in the middle of the day, must have been a hawk. Duck feathers scattered everywhere and a fairly shredded duck. Now I was down to 1 male and 5 females. I did as planned and that night locked the ducks in my enclosure - it definitely isn’t a fortress but I’d never had any issues with animals penned in there. I went to bed that night but wasn’t resting very easy. Around midnight I woke up with a jolt to quacking and flapping and just an overall ruckus. I ran outside and was confronted with 2 more decapitated female ducks.. in the enclosure. I had to go inside and get my husband to help but we then locked the ducks in the coop with the chickens for the rest of the night. Down to 1 male and 3 females. Less ducks than I originally started with. What a tragedy. What a gut punch.

The next morning I took the kids to daycare and then drove to our local ranch store Murdochs. I bought chicken wire and bird netting and I came home and over the next 5 hours proceeded to build a fortress. I probably went a little overboard, but I put chicken wire all the way around 2 rows and then fully covered the top of the enclosure with bird netting and connected it to the chicken wire all the way around. My hands were raw and bleeding doing the work in the dry cold air by myself. PS — if you have to do anything with chicken wire… have 2 people, it’s a pain the ass to mange by yourself. It’s definitely not pretty, it’s not as tight as it could be, and the ground is frozen so I haven’t staked it in all the way around yet. But.. it’s been almost a week now, and I still have 1 male duck and 3 female ducks. I still have all my chickens. I moved the ducks water into the enclosure — in the winter they had had a stock tank under our porch where it was easier to fill without worrying about freezing hoses. But now they’re staying in their fortress for the meantime. We’ll see when I let them roam again. There’s still plenty of roaming chickens in our neighborhood.. hopefully whatever predator found our yard will move on and never come back. That was a rough week. 8 ducks lost.

Thanks for reading!