Raising Ducks in the City

On February 17th, Dottie and Emma, two Indian Runner ducklings descended upon the city of San Francisco from a little feed store in Sebastopol. Their plan; to enjoy a little patch of pond and earth in the Sunset district, while gobbling up as many slugs and snails as they can find and turning those nutrients into nitrogen rich compost manures, and managing to leave about an egg a day for us to enjoy. Here are some photos of them on their first day in the garden, more to come soon!

(L) Getting them slowly acquainted with the outdoors. (R) Their first wander through a vegetable garden.

(L) Getting fluffy at 2 months old and catching shade under an artichoke and lupine bush. (R) Haven’t been able to tell them apart by their looks alone. Emma quacks and Dottie squeaks. This is their night pen indoors. We haven’t built an outdoor enclosure for them to stay in at night, protected from raccoons or other predators.

This is Dottie and Emma’s outdoor pen. In the morning we take them out of the night pen and they walk right over through the garden and hop into their day pen. It has a small fountain pond that I have to refill each day with fresh water since they get it really dirty - but it’s nutritious water for my thirsty fruit trees. The straw helps to keep the flies down and gives them something to dig in to look for slugs and worms.

(L) Emma laid her first egg on July 25th, about 6 months since she herself hatched. As of this writing, she has laid an egg every morning for over 10 days. This has caused quite a stir because we were expecting one every other day since Runner ducks are typically less than 300/yr layers. We have also determined their body shape isn’t quite true to Runners and now we aren’t sure what breed they are. We are considering that they might be Blue Swedish, Cayuga, or ? (R) We also discovered that Dottie should more properly be called Mr. Dottie. He has a curl to his tale and from the photo he has a lighter colored beak, and a greener head - consistent with most drakes.

More to come soon. If you have any questions about raising ducks in San Francisco, just ask!