If you want to eliminate garden pests naturally without damaging your plants Runner ducks could be your answer. My youngest and I recently incubated some runner duck eggs it was a fun project for us to do together and we ended up with two ducklings from six eggs, this felt like a little miracle considering the eggs arrived in the mail but we put them in the incubator and 28 days later they hatched! We have completely fallen in love with these ducks and have since added three more.... I can't say enough about how great they are! Amazing for my vegetable garden (they eat snails whole), well behaved (we have trained them not to come on our deck so no duck poop issues). Runner ducks are like the penguins of the duck world they walk upright which by itself is a good reason to keep them, it just makes you smile to see them move 😂 . Apparently I can expect up to 300 eggs a year per duck once they start laying. Update! they are laying and and definately living up to expectation with the add bonus of them being less cunning? and having a much smaller laying window than chickens making their eggs easy to collect.
Just look at them! Adorable little gardening buddies. UPDATE! Although I took great care to protect them when they were younger it felt safe to free range them once they got bigger (they are quite large ducks) but a few days ago a hawk attacked one of the flock! Duck in question survived (thank goodness 😟) but we are a little bit careful now about open paddocks. In New Zealand probably the main risks are dogs, stoats and hawks something to keep in mind when planning their enclosure!
No comments: