This Cayuga Duck Has a Weird Story

Today I've got a story I want to tell you guys about this duck. This one right here. But in order for me to be able to tell this story, I guess I gotta go get my net. Here it is. Any good poultry farmer has a good net. The easiest, least stressful way to try to catch a bird. Okay, you're out of the tank. It's okay. I got you. It's cool. It's all good. So this duck right here, her name is Generic Duck. Generic Duck and her sister Jerk Duck were actually given to us about a year ago. Some friends of mine who lived on a lake house nearby here, they had actually gotten a few ducklings and they were raising them and they were letting them live outside on the lake. But as the lake began to freeze, they realized that they couldn't keep them during the winter. And actually the four other ducks that Jerk Duck and Generic Duck were brought up with were actually eaten by predators. I know, don't panic. It's okay. It's okay. And so these friends came to me and said, Hey, do you mind taking these ducks for the winter and watching over them and let your farm be some sort of like ducky daycare for our ducks? And so we took the two ducks on and spent the whole winter with them. Cayuga ducks are a really cool breed of duck because they actually have these special feathers that are black, but they turn sort of like an iridescent green. I think you can kind of see the green here in this angle. Just turn out of the shadow. Can you see it? Pretty cool, huh? Cayugas are a really nice breed of duck if you're ever thinking about raising ducks yourself. They're much more low-key than say the Khaki Campbell. They are rather quiet relative to other mallard-related duck breeds. And so they're nice from that standpoint if you don't want a ton of quacking. Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. What are you doing? You're making me look bad. I said you were quiet. They also lay really interesting eggs. The Cayuga duck, when they first start laying eggs, it actually comes out black. As they continue to lay eggs, the eggs start to look more like a gray color. Now the two Cayuga ducks we've had in our flock have been very nice. Not only have we gotten interesting eggs from them, but we've actually been able to successfully hatch out several of their offspring. Probably most notable and most famous of the hybrids was Ron Swanson, the duck that thinks she's a goose. I hatched her out with a bunch of geese back in the spring, and those geese and that duck have become the tightest crew on the farm, known as the Parks and Recreation crew. Over the summer, we also hatched some Khaki Campbell Cayuga cross drakes. In fact, we even kept one of those drakes, and I'm pleased to announce that his name is going to be Sirius Quack. That is Sirius Black. You know, like Sirius Black, but he's a duck. But all of that's interesting background, but that's actually not the story I wanted to try to tell you guys. The story I wanted to try to tell you guys is about this duck specifically, a generic duck here. When a Cayuga duck goes through its molt and it gets older, it sheds those black feathers in favor of these white feathers. And you'll actually notice that she has a particularly high amount of white feathers on the back of her neck. Back in the summer when we were in mating season, she was like practically bald back there. The drakes had picked off all the neck feathers that she had, and so that was all bald. And if I was just sort of unscientifically saying which duck got the most action, she was really popular with the drakes. And so at a certain point, though, as we got to around September, I think she was getting kind of fed up with it all. And there was a point in time where she disappeared. And like she went missing for like a good chunk of the month of September and a good chunk of the month of October. For a while there, I assumed that the coyotes got her, or an owl got her, or a bobcat got her. You know, we had the perimeter fence up and we have Toby wandering around, but when a duck doesn't come home, I'd gotten used to the idea that that duck was never coming home. So after about three weeks of being missing, I sort of wrote her off. But then one morning, as I was doing my chores and, you know, working with the geese and getting ready to let the ducks out, Where have you been hiding, Cayuga duck? I heard this gal quacking away and eating some of the food and drinking some of the water. And so I decided to go up to the duck house and release the rest of the ducks. But as soon as I released the other ducks, she disappeared, and I didn't know what happened to her. But because I'd seen her and because I knew that she hadn't just expired, I started to develop a theory about what happened to her. And that theory was that she had a clutch of eggs and she was trying to hatch the eggs. And I waited for another two weeks, and there were a couple more times where she made mysterious appearances out of nowhere, and I was really happy to see her, but I also didn't see her appear with any ducklings. Here in Vermont, when we're in late September, early October, temps are already well below freezing at night, and I didn't think that a mother duck sitting on those eggs could sustain things. But I kept careful watch on her over and over again. I even found the spot where her nest was, and I staked it all out just to see how she would do, because I had this hope of maybe I would get these magical fall ducklings, which would add to my flock and it would be kind of cool. But after seven weeks of waiting and watching and hoping she would hatch some ducklings, I knew it wasn't going to happen. And I was really worried that I was going to have to break up her nest. But I think she also came to the same conclusion. She settled back into the flock, and things have more or less gone back to normal. After she gave up on the nest on her own, I ended up going in and taking a look at the eggs inside the nest, and they were only partially developed. Again, my theory that it was just too cold for her to hatch eggs proved true, but it does have me wondering if maybe next spring or next summer I try to have her hatch out her own clutch, and really try to do it for two reasons. Number one, she did a good job being a mom. I've had trouble in the past with my Khaki Campbell ducks and trying to get them to sit on a clutch of eggs and hatch out some ducklings. But for this Cayuga here, she did a really good job of being very consistent. And then number two, if she were to set up a nest somewhere here around the farm, I'm a lot less worried about predators than I might have been, say, a year ago. You know, we've got Toby here on guard. We've got the fence around here. And so generally speaking, inside these fenced walls here, I'm feeling like it's a very safe space for her. My safe space. So who knows, maybe Generic Duck here might end up being a natural mom in the not-too-distant future. All right, down you go, girl. You can go rejoin your flock. So there was actually one other thing I wanted to try to show you today, because I know I got some comments and questions about it in the last video I made about Toby Dog. A lot of you wanted to know what was the deal with this structure and what's going on here. So a few weeks ago, I actually came to the conclusion that I needed to change up my winter strategy for housing the geese. You know, my plan was to try to winterize this shed a little bit and let that serve as sort of like a winter housing area that I wouldn't lock the geese up into, but if they needed to get into shelter, they could. The problem is I realized that if I let my geese free-range too much, especially in the winter and early spring, I run the risk of them not laying their eggs in the right place. And if I lose out on some geese eggs, I lose out on money for the farm. So I realized I needed to create a shed where they could have basically an ongoing regular nest. And the easiest solution that was available to me was to actually take the Toby shed and turn that into a goose shed. All last year, Toby used that shed for his winter housing, but he never really used it. Like, he would barely stay inside of it. When he was a puppy, I would close him up in there and keep him in there with the door shut, but as he got to be a teenager, it seemed totally silly to do that. And in fact, he likes being outside, as I think I've clearly established with you guys in a number of videos. And so that's why I decided, since Toby doesn't need a 16x16 shed, but then I also recognized that a 16x16 shed is a perfect overnight housing for 16 geese, it just seemed to make perfect sense to me to move the geese into the Toby shed. And Toby, he's got his little doggy house. And so all I wanted to do was build a simple three-sided lean-to structure to keep the snow and rain and wind off of his doggy house. He doesn't need much, but he's my homeboy, so I like to give him just a little bit of extra protection here. This structure was sort of an experiment on my part. Given how expensive it seems like dimensional lumber is at the lumber yard and the big box hardware and building supply stores, I really came to the conclusion that, well, why don't I try to build it with lumber that I have here on the property? You know, we spent a lot of time on fence posts this year, and there's a lot of waste product that gets created when you're getting fence posts. And so I took a lot of the shorter ends and narrower pieces, and I used that to build as the structure and the base of it. And then my buddy Jeff actually cut down a couple of cedar trees from our property a few months ago, and he milled those cedars, and he had a lot of siding left over from it. So really in an afternoon, I just sort of slapped it all together, and I had some scrap roofing left over from other building projects, and that's how I ended up with that little shed. The plan is that'll be something that'll be available to Toby if he needs it, but for the most part, I don't think he's going to need it. And by the way, if you guys aren't following us on TikTok, this isn't going to make any sense to you, but on TikTok last week, we actually had an election of our own here at Gold Shaw Farm where we elected the president of Gold Shaw Farm. And, well, everybody got a chance to vote on TikTok, and, you know, the winner was pretty clear. It was Toby Dog. The runner-up was Pablo Barncat, and since we were using original United States election rules, the runner-up became the vice president. So Toby is now president of the farm. Pablo is now vice president of the farm. That'll be a four-year term that Toby has. I'm really excited for him. You know, we are putting more and more regular updates about the farm on TikTok, so if you want to check it out, I'll leave a link down below for our TikTok account. It's a lot of fun. There you go. Good job, guys. Hey, where are you going? All ducks, go to bed. Nice and easy. But now I've got to do the geese, and that's always a little bit more complicated, especially because they're still getting used to their new setup. So I'm actually housing two different flocks of geese inside here, and so the first flock of geese is always really easy to get in. It's getting that second flock of goose or geese in here that's always much, much harder. The first night I did this, it was absolute chaos when I put them all in the same house. But overall, it was a lot more noise than any violence, and I'm noticing that it's becoming easier and easier to get the two different flocks of geese into this one house. So let's see how we do in this go-around. Come on. In you go. In you go. Everybody in. Come on. In you go. In, in, in. Everybody in. There we go. Come on, guys. Time for bed. Let's go. In you go. Come on. There we go. Pablo, you dingus, what are you doing up there? Okay, it's time to lock up Penny and Bernie now. Sometimes I feel like they're at the forgotten edge of the farm over here. They're outside of our main fence, and so they don't have the luxury of Toby's protection. And, you know, trying to get them water and take care of them on a regular basis, it's always a little bit harder. I almost feel like I forget about them sometimes. All right, good night, you guys. I kind of wonder if it makes sense to actually just pick this whole thing up and move it to this side of the fence and set them up over here. I also think I still need to get a couple of more birds. I think having more birds in this coop during the winter will keep them warmer. So don't be surprised if you see a few more silkies here in the not-too-distant future. Okay, Toby Dog, you ready to get fed? Come on, Toby. Oh, boy, Toby Dog. You got your food over here. I got you a fresh bucket of water. Even though it's about 40 degrees right now, it should be freezing temps tonight, so that way your water doesn't freeze up on you.