October Already!

Not sure how that happened?  The last time I wrote to you it was July!

How the weeks have slipped by.  Many, many things have happened... A few random country drives exploring the Lockyer Valley and its many hidden treasures.

 Lots of vegies harvested from our garden, much planting of hedges and fruit trees.  I had surgery on my stomach and have spent the last month recovering. My beautiful little sister got married to her high school sweetheart.  

Somewhere in amongst all that we finished the coop and adopted three beautiful white muscovy ducks and last sunday we adopted 3 rescued battery hens. (from  http://homesforhens.net)

Where do I begin!!!

Duckies! My birthday present from February was complete, with lots of help from our amazing friends.  Finally we finished the coop after months of work, it was as snake and fox proof as we could build, ready for its new tennants. About 9 weeks ago we had the day off and jumped at the chance to find our new family members! A couple of friends came with us to the local produce store where we were given three dirty, dirty, duckies in a box.  I was told they were approximately 5 months old, but I have no idea!! haha.

Cersei in the front, Arya in the middle and Daenerys is last.

Arya

We filled up half a plastic barrel with water (approx 120L), and soon we discovered three fluffy white pretty ducks.  We have been spoiling them rotten ever since.  Finding names was easy as our favourite tv show at the moment is Game of Thrones, we settled on that theme.  Our dirty little girls once clean became Arya, Cersei and Daenerys.

We feed them Darling Downs layer grain mix and all the weeds we can pull from our gardens, not to mention all the kitchen scraps they can handle!  They are great little composters, and on the weekends we let them out into the  yard.  They are adorable waddling around through the long grass giggling at each other, chasing moths.  Although I did my research on the breed before we bought them and chose them for their surprisingly quiet manner, I was surprised that they really are so quiet.  They seem to giggle and twitter in hushed tones at each other when happy and waggle their little tails.

One of the girls (Cersei) is in love with Manny, she follows him all around the place.  He is in turn fascinated by them all!  I believe he spends many  hours staring at them,  daydreaming about being brave enough to pounce on one.  As Muscovy ducks are large, and my girls are nearly the same size as Manny and Willis already, it seems it is a battle the cats don't think they can win.  They content themselves with following the ducks around the garden keeping a watchful eye.

Manny and Arya checking each other out.

 They have all entertained me and kept me company while I have been recovering for the last month.  Recently two of the ducks have started laying eggs, and oh my god are they delicious! The shells are amazingly thick, and the yolks are quite creamy.  We have been eating omelettes a lot lately.... i think i need to learn to make pavlova, i read that duck eggs are perfect for baking and pavs so that will be my next experiment, and maybe homemade pasta.

Eggs laid by our ducks (Bottom) and eggs laid by our chickens (Top)

Half a massive duck egg omlette we made, B ate the other half!

Next I will tell you all about our beautiful new ex-battery hens we adopted, they complete our little flock, but that is a tale for another day.