Welcome to Relaxed Farming
- Alpacas
- Chickens
- Dairy Goats
- Ducks
- Geese
- Pigs
- Pygmy Goats
- Quail
- Rabbits
- Sheep
- Turkeys
- Polytunnel
- Photo Stories
- Video Stories
- Food
- Smallholding Map
- 2013
- 2014
- August
- September
- October
- November
- December
- January
- February
- March
- April
- May
- June
- July
- August
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
Tuesday, 5th August 2014
It's official: ducks love mud!! Apple's brood of 11, all beautifully clean when they came out of the barn this morning, took full advantage of last night's torrential rain and began dabbling in the first puddle they found. It is quite interesting to watch the ducks' behaviour: it does seem to be they are able to find the wettest part of the paddock straight away and turn it into mud. The reason they do this is very simple, it is much easier for a duck to filter a mouthful of mud and find any bugs and bits of plants than it is to filter a mouthful of dry soil. See 30th June for more on how a duck filters its food in this way.
It is always good to allow animals on the smallholding to find their food naturally like this and Muscovies are ducks that like to forage and find their own food where they can. The broods we have at the moment wander all over the smallholding and because they have access to such a large area, the holes they make with their dabbling are spaced out and so the damage is not that great.
We have more of a problem with damage from wild rabbits at the moment: we frequently see five or six at once in the paddock and as well as digging underneath some of the animal housing, they are also eating our precious grass. It is said that one rabbit eats the same amount of grass as ten sheep: not great when like us one has limited grazing. There is not a lot we can do and we are certainly not interested in getting someone in to shoot them. Having rabbits on our smallholding is one of the reasons why we no longer do any vegetable growing outside: we just could not keep the rabbits away from our greens!!
And finally to our light golden bantam who is pictured here looking very broody. She became broody over a week ago and tucked herself away in one of the nesting boxes in the barn. We kept moving her and she kept going back. This morning we removed the nestbox itself and yet she just settled in the corner where the box had been and gave us 'the eye'.
Not sure what we are going to do with her: we don't really want to do any more hatching now...
