Duck. Duck. Duck.Duck. Dog.

Our pets. We are now the proud owners of a Cayuga Duck, two Blue Swedish Ducks, and Buff Orphington Duck. The blackish green one is the Cayuga. Strangely enough she occasionally lays black eggs. This is their indoor pen in the corner of the garage. We took a couple of old hollow core doors and made one the side of the pen, and the other a roof to help them stay warm. The bottom is filled with straw and we're using a heated dog bowl for water. Orrin takes a pitcher out with him when he leaves for work in the morning. Silas, Emmet, and I go out about 9 to feed and collect the eggs. Orrin usually checks them on his way in from the garage after work and we take an extra pitcher of water out if necessary. The end panel of the pen has a built in feeder that Silas dumps their feed into. He's using a trowel in the picture but we've since made a scoop out of an old milk jug.

This past weekend was nice and warm with highs in the 50's so Orrin cut a hole in the side of the garage and now the ducks have an outdoor area. Right now, their food and water are still inside, so they prefer it in there. But I'm hoping they'll be outside more often as the weather warms up. I have seen them come out occasionally on their own to enjoy the sunshine. But I have to admit, there isn't much out there to tempt them. Just a boring concrete slab. We'll try to throw some weed and other veggie scraps in there once the garden gets going. We decided on ducks instead of chickens because we'd heard they were quieter, they seemed friendlier, and they are better able to forage for their food. So eventually we would like to have them roaming the yard and garden eating slugs, bugs, and weeds.
Here's a picture of the nest. I know, you're thinking, "Wow, eggs, straw, is that duck poop? Fascinating." But they are our eggs, and I'm pretty proud of our little flock. We've been collecting 3-4 eggs a day now for the past 2 weeks. A couple days we've actually gotten 5 eggs. I'm not exactly sure how 4 ducks are capable of that many eggs. I'm guessing we must have just missed collecting one, or the timing of our collection just yielded an extra egg. Or possibly there is a renegade duck loose in the town depositing eggs in our garage.
My 4-H days taught me the importance of keeping records of animal projects. (Well, actually they taught me the difficulty of making up a record book the week before the fair, so I'm trying to be more diligent and set a good example for my future 4-H'ers.) So I started a spreadsheet/duck diary to record our expenditures, egg collection, observations, experiments, successes and failures. In a little over a month of having the ducks, we've collected 71 eggs, and spent $104 on fencing, feed, ducks, lighting, bedding, and heated water dish. So that comes out to about $1.50 an egg. Not exactly a money saving venture at the moment. But if we just take feed cost into account they are the same price per egg as the free range chicken eggs. Plus we get the awesome soil enriching duck poo to put in the compost bin and garden. And the self satisfaction of raising our own food. Not to mention delicious delicious carmel butterscotch egg custard.

Duck Egg Custard
6 T sugar
1 T corn syrup
3 T water
1 cup cream (divided)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/8 t salt
2 cups milk
3 whole eggs
3 egg yolks
2 t vanilla

Boil water sugar, and syrup until it turns amber colored, about 4 minutes. Stir in half the cream until smooth. Add remaining cream, brown sugar, and salt. Stir until dissolved. Whisk in the milk, then the eggs, yolks and vanilla. Pour the mixture through a strainer (I found this to be important with the duck eggs because the whites can be a little tough/stringy so the stainer caught some that hadn't been completely beaten.) into custard cups. Place in a roasting pan and fill with hot water until it come 2/3 up side of the custard cups. Bake at 325 for 25-35 minutes depending on the size of your custard cups. Mine took longer becasue I used two larger dishes instead of individual cups. It should jiggle just a bit in the middle and a knife inserted should come out clean. Let cool, cover and refrigerate. Will keep for about 3 days.

With the left over whites, I made this recipe. I didn't have the red paste coloring, so I improvised by adding red decorating sugar in place of some of the white sugar and made them a pale pink. I'd read that the duck egg whites were a little bit more difficult to use for meringues, but I didn't have any trouble, and they came out tasting and looking great.