Saxony Ducks

These are our Saxony ducks and I love to watch them duck about, especially when the weather is nasty. When it's cold and miserable here and it has been raining for days on end, the sheep and goats will be looking grumpily out of the barn door, but the ducks will be out in the mud and wet acting as if to say, "Hey, isn't this FANTASTIC!! It's pouring down rain, and wet and cold today! Hurrah!"



Aside from the simple fact that I am enormously cheered up by their enjoyment of life despite our dismal weather, I also love keeping ducks because I love duck eggs (and duck meat, too). Duck eggs are a bit larger than chicken eggs, they are a bit different in texture and preferred by many for baking, but they are essentially interchangeable with chicken eggs. I think that they taste, well, eggier, and I consider them a gastronomical treat. Since I try and only eat an egg once a week, I make a bit of an event of my weekly egg -a duck egg if I have the option.



I refer to our Saxony ducks as 'the crazy ducks' because compared to the rather placid Muscovy duck, they are a bit skittish. "Oh No, RUN!" is their normal response to most things.



The Saxony duck eggs we set to incubate last month was unsuccessful. I'm not sure what the problem was. We will check everything and try it again, and hopefully we will have little yellow ducklings hatching in a month. Keep your fingers crossed.