Drake the Drake

This is one of our duck hens with a drake in the background.

Last week we discovered two things about our drakes (the males).

We noticed that their drake curl finally came in.

Yay!

We also discovered that their heads are darker than the hens.

This makes it a lot easier to look at them and tell them apart.

The darker headed drake heads are in the upper left and right.

The lighter brown headed hen is in the middle left.

Beautiful hen.

This is Bender, another one of the hens.

Something happened when she was little and now her tail bends to the right.

We nick-named her before we knew she was a hen.

The name stuck so that's what we call her.

Don't let the defective looking tail fool you, she's one of the bossier hens!

The hens have freckled beaks.

They are also the ones that QUACK!

The drakes make a quieter mumbly sound.

All these years I thought all ducks quacked.

Nope, only the hens do.

Now I know.

This is Drake the drake.

We've decided to keep only one Indian Runner drake.

It's better for our sized flock to have only one male.

We let Connor name and pick which one is going to stay.

(Like we had a choice!)

And on another duck related note.

Our experiment of keeping the ducks inside the yard has ended.

They've been evicted.

It took us a couple of days to figure out who was destroying the plants in the flower bed.

Initially we thought it was the dog but there wasn't quite enough evidence.

Then we found the ducks in the flower bed.

No question as to what caused my plants to look like this.

So the ducks were re-located (again).

They are back outside of the fenced yard.

I think Pepper is happy to have the yard to herself again... well almost.

We still have the two not-so-little ducklings and chicks in the yard.