Sept. 13, 2011

This morning I was preforming my usual chores of cleaning the duck pools, cleaning drinking water dishes, refreshing straw and providing food for our ducks and chicken.  

However, today as Buffy and Phoebe came running out the door of their enclosure, I noticed Phoebe was dropping feathers right and left, literally.  Ah, Phoebe is now molting.  I did not give it another thought, as I went about my cleaning duties. 

Oma, was still hot to beat on Phoebe, but they kept a rather polite, but not quiet, distance.  Then it happened.....A hawk came gliding over very low and slow. Oma sounded the alarm and everyone ran into Buffy and Phoebe's enclosure, where I was filling their pools with fresh water. I stepped out to see the hawk take its leave.  While my back was turned Oma and Phoebe could not take the strain of politeness any further, the fight was on again.  I broke it up. Blinkin was out in the yard bugging. She was oblivious to the fighting, (she must be deaf).  Oma stormed out of the girl's enclosure in a huff, QUAKE, QUAKE, Q U A K E!!!! She went to her enclosure complaining loudly the whole way.  Then Phoebe turned on Little Dude, who was still in their enclosure. The fight got ugly and I broke it up.  Blinkin, singing La la la la and eating bugs.  I chase everyone out of the girl's enclosure to finish up, thinking they are done. OH NO!  Phoebe takes a run at Dude and BAM the fight is on. I again break this up....Blinkin prancing through the yard catching bugs.  Dude heads to his enclosure and Phoebe is hot on his tail. I came around from the opposite side to find Phoebe in Blinkin's enclosure pounding or trying to pound on Oma through the fence!  I break it up by picking Phoebe up and moving her. She comes right back and they go at it again.  Where or where is Blinkin!? (Blinkin singing: la, la, la, la, I love fresh bugs).  Finally I pick up Phoebe and carry her to her enclosure.  The noise of the girls yelling and fighting was deafening!  Phoebe marches over to the fence between herself and the boys and begins yelling, at the top of her voice, at the boys and if she could have reached them through the fence, (as they were trying) she would have torn their beaks off!!  She tried it a couple of times.  We have chain link fencing but put up 1" chicken wire on the chain link between the enclosures to keep them from thrusting their heads through the fence to grab each other. If the boys only knew that that fencing saved their beaks today.  No, I could not catch any of this on video.

If you are familiar with West Side Story, the fighting gangs from the east side and west side.  I have something similar going on here. Oma is on the east side and Phoebe is on the west side of the coop.  It is Rouen fowl against common fowl.  Still reminds me of girls fighting, now very physical, over boys, but I think it has escalated to who will be queen and rule the coop.  So two molting volatile female ducks saying to each other, "you want a piece of me, come and get it."  When they are not in the yard they stand in the corner of their enclosure facing each other, yelling at the top of their lungs at each other.   Until this fighting and molting is done, we can say good bye to the quiet, peace of the farm...

Here is a picture of Oma and Little Dude. She is a Rouen breed.  He is a Mallard.

The picture below is Phoebe.  I call her Miss Phoebe Snow.  She is the girl the boys are hot for.   She is probably of Mallard breeding.   The picture below Phoebe is Buffy. She is a crested (the white up do on her head is a crest) barn yard runner breed.  I call her Miss Buffy Buffay (boo-fay).  She is considered by our boys to be a high maintenance, high dollar female.  They do not spend a great deal of energy chasing her.

Now the two boys that seem to be the underlying cause of this molting duo, Macintosh and Jonathan.  They are an Appleyard breed.  I call them the apple dumpling gang. 

 Now you know all the players in this not so musical drama of west verses east.