All four ducklings made it through the night alive.
This morning they were getting trained on "personal space". The ducklings were raised in a crowded pen and their idea of personal space is much less than that of the girls with seniority.
Ducks are gregarious animals. They find safety in flocks (or "rafts" when they are on the water). They have a natural desire to be close to each other, but how close is variable that depends on the environment.
It looks to me like the senior girls are setting up a zone-defense as one might see in the game of basketball. They want a certain amount of space between each player...not too much but not too close, either.
My guess is that there is an optimum range between ducks when they march abreast foraging. That is, each duck has a lane that she can efficiently forage and she will not tolerate another duck cutting into that lane.
As she marches up that lane, she shoves her bill beneath every wad of vegetation, under every dirt clod, under every board...searching for snails, slugs, centipedes, cut-worms and other tasty bits of protein. That said, the lane is something like 12"-to-18" wide, which is about twice as far as she can reach by pivoting her body and extending her neck.
For those of you who have studied defensive warfare, those lanes are analogous to "fields of fire". There is a certain amount of overlap that is desirable but too much overlap defeats the purpose.
Today's work-ticket
Stretch a short fence across the middle of the fenced in garden. The beans are starting to come up and I don't think they will survive the ducks. I anticipate that I can dispense with the fence in about 10 days. By then, the beans should be tall enough and well enough rooted to brush-off the duck's foraging.
I'm curious how the duck-pest patrol works out. We have chickens and let them roam, and they are BRUTAL on every bit of landscaping, I don't let them near the big garden, the little one is fenced off in-part b/c of them.
ReplyDeleteLots of folks here keep ducks, too. I hear the eggs are tasty. A friend has 2 geese that are tolerable, but they don't do much other than honk at cars in the driveway.
Time will tell.
DeleteI saw lots of dormant snails when I was planting the rutabaga seeds in the potato patch. I am seriously contemplating fencing that off with a low fence and running the ducks through there.
It would be awesome if they ate Colorado Potato Beetles and their larva. That would be a SERIOUS bonus.
Ducks are not all-terrain animals. They struggle when they have to push-through 8" tall vegetation, so the potato angle will be limited to that time before they canopy over and the stems start sagging.
This arrived in my email from somebody who knows a thing or two about potatoes "Yes ducks do eat CPB larvae and as you know are gentler towards garden plants than chickens are."
ReplyDeleteSmile, good to know
DeleteI would agree on the duck's 'lanes'. I've seen it when they come through my yard eating acorns.
ReplyDelete