Help, my duck has a limp! What do you do with a limping duck?

Do not panic.

Runner ducks are prone to foot, ankle and leg injury or inflammation. If it seems to be inflamed and bumblefoot is NOT to blame, nor is there a thorn or other sharp object stuck inside, then all you can really do is take it to a vet. As this is very stressful for the duck, it is best to call the vet first to see if it is really necessary. In our case, the vet was used to dealing with all manner of poultry so was happy to accept our description of the problem with a few photos of the injury. She agreed that transporting the duck to a waiting room full of dogs and other animals would cause it a tremendous amount of suffering which was in this case unnecessary.

What can a vet do?

Assuming the vet does not find anything you missed, all you or the vet can do is give the duck anti-inflammatories.

How do you give medication to a duck?

It depends on the type of medication, of course, though our vet gave us a non-soluble gel in pre-dosed syringes. She said we should catch the duck and inject the liquid down its throat (also very stressful for the duck). Instead, I soaked the liquid onto food and fed it to the duck. I looked up this particular anti-inflammatory online and it is frequently prescribed to be eaten with food, so no problem there. You will need to devise a system of separating the ducks while they eat so that only the sick duck gets the medication - we only have two ducks, so I just held out two bowls and made sure the injured duck got the bowl with the medication. Feed it first thing in the day when it is hungry, and do not give it any other food until it has eaten the medicated food. If it takes more than one sitting for it to eat the food, this is no problem.

How long does it take to work?

The vet, based on the Indian Runner ducks she keeps herself, estimated a day and a half. Our duck, at her worst, had a really very severe limp indeed. Although we saw the slightest signs of recovery after 24 hours, the duck took almost a week to fully recover.

Can I eat the eggs after medicating my duck?

It entirely depends on the medication. If you are worming your ducks or giving it anything which is essentially a kind of poison, it would be unwise to eat the eggs. In our case, the anti-inflammatory prescribed was the same as one available over-the-counter/without prescription for humans, but in an absolutely miniscule dose. Even if 100% of the dose we gave it everyday had gone into the egg (it doesn’t, nothing like), the amount per egg would have done nothing to a human body. So, was I going to throw away the eggs from both ducks (they lay together and the eggs are identical, so we can’t tell the ‘medicated’ from the unmedicated) for 21 days after the end of the treatment, as some would recommend? 5 days treatment + 21 days waiting time X 2 eggs per day = 52 eggs thrown in the bin. No, of course not. I ate them. They were great. They were normal eggs in every way. One can assume that the cholesterol from those 52 eggs has done me far more harm than homeopathic amounts of mild anti-inflammatory which may have been in the eggs (but probably weren’t). That said, do not take human medical advice from someone writing a duck blog!

What if I can’t get to a vet?

I paid a total of €5 (a little over $5 US) for the consultation, a five-day course of medication and the syringes. There are guides online for dosing your duck with standard ibuprofen; this seems popular in the US where vet bills are high. If you can get to a vet and afford a vet, go to the vet.

How many ducks do I need?

The most accurate answer is, of course, “it depends”. What I can do is tell you what works for us, where we are, on the land we have, and give you variables to consider so you can work out the number of ducks you need.

OUR CONSIDERATIONS

Our priorities

• slug control (crucial)
• egg production (important)
• consume leftover food (would be a nice bonus)

Our property

• Area: The area they are patrolling for slugs is around 700 square meters (7,500 square feet).
• Neighbouring property: We are next to a forest, so more slugs than you would expect for the area.
• Rainfall: 850-900mm (35") per year. Most of the rainfall is during May, June, July,  August and September. This means that the weather is perfect for slugs all through the growing season.
• Temperature: The warmest month is July with a day/night average of around 18°C (65ºF). January is the coldest month with day/night average of -4°C (25ºF).
• Soil: Heavy clay. The surface stays damp for days after it rains, meaning even more slugs than what you would expect.
• Vegetation: We like to leave our grass longer and other vegetation less restrained than most gardeners. Again, this means more damp shade for the slugs to breed and hide in.

OUR DUCKS

We have two female Indian Runner ducks. They have slightly more Mallard (like the ones you see in ponds, rivers and lakes in the temperate zones) in them than most Indian Runners.

OUR OUTCOMES

• Slug control was insufficient during most of the first growing season. Now, during the second growing season, it is perfectly adequate.
• Egg production is 1 egg per duck per day, for nearly all of the year. We try to eat as many eggs as we can, but we still end up giving them away.
• Leftover food is something we don't throw out much anyway. The majority of what we do throw out we are able to feed to the ducks.

The ducks don’t seem to be making a difference to the slug population. What’s wrong?

In short: nothing. Give it time.

We got our ducks at the beginning of June that year. The slugs were mostly adult size, but our ducks were not quite there yet. The slugs had the highest population we’d ever seen, but our new ducks were only just finding their feet in our garden.

We were faced with a situation where not quite fully grown ducks were trying to swallow huge slugs. Not only that, there were more slugs than even growing ducks could possibly eat. For a couple of months it seemed like the ducks were making no difference at all to the slug population. It got to the stage where the ducks simply could not stomach eating any more slugs, even if we collected them for them. Even if we rolled the slugs in their favourite food, the ducks would simply eat around the slug!

After a while, though, we did start to notice a decline in the slug population. The biggest change you will notice, however, will be in the spring. Most of the oversized adult slugs will die over the winter, leaving only the tiny slugs which hide under plant pots, and of course the slug eggs. Now the spring after you get your ducks, they will be fully grown. They will have had a winter with no slugs to eat, and will be delighted for every tiny slug they find. While last summer they could only manage a few large slugs per hour (and not even that hour after hour), now they can eat several tiny slugs per minute. It is at this point in the cycle that your ducks will make the most difference to your slug population.

It is now June again. We have had our ducks for one full year. Even though this summer has given us enough rain every single day to keep the garden soaked, and even though our garden looks like a jungle, we have hardly any slugs.

How much slug control can I expect from ducks?

In short: lots!

So the ducks will eliminate every single slug?

Not quite. You will never, ever get rid of every single slug, everywhere in your garden. There are a couple of reasons for this. The most obvious one is that slugs will always come in from outside your garden. The second is that ducks don’t eat the slug eggs. What ducks will do is bring the slug population down to a very low equilibrium. There is nothing else out there that can do that!

How long does it take for the ducks to be effective?

Well, we bought our ducks at 8 weeks old (old enough for the breeder to know for sure what sex they were). At this age, our ducks were close to adult size. Our 8 week old ducks started eating slugs from the very beginning. How many slugs they eat depends largely on whether they find the slugs or not, and what size of slugs we are talking about.

Our needy ducks shortly after we bought them

The time it takes for your ducks to make a noticeable difference in slug population will depend on how big your property is, how many ducks you have, and whether the slugs have anywhere to retreat to where the ducks can’t easily find them. More explanation to come in the next post!

Why do I need ducks?

“You don't have a slug problem; you have a duck deficiency.”  - Bill Mollison

There are a variety of reasons why you should want ducks. They lay eggs and/or can be reared for meat, they eat garden pests, are a great pet, increase the fertility of your soil, use up many types of food scrap, are great company when doing the weeding and in a great many ways deserve the title of “clowns of the garden”.

For us, the simple reason why we needed ducks was that our garden and the plants within it, whether edibles or ornamentals, were being absolutely ravaged by slugs and snails. We live in Austria (Alps, not kangaroos), where we have pretty much every type of slug and snail imaginable: cute little black slugs, half-inch grey slugs, orangey-brown slugs up to a foot in length, big black snails with orange patches, teeny almost invisible snails, humongous Weinberg snails (the ones you find in French restaurants) and everything in between. Some gardening years in Austria are so bad that the slugs even start eating plants which are supposed to be slug-proof, like tomatoes!

But wait, did you try…

YES! We tried slug pellets (yes, both ferramol and metaldehyde), we tried beer traps, we tried copper strips, we tried spiky slug fences made from old cans, we tried wood ash, we tried chalk, we tried that thing where you cut a potato in half and go collect the slugs afterwards, we tried that thing where you put down wooden planks and pick the slugs off the bottom while they sleep during the daytime, we tried hand collecting them just after dusk… we tried all those and many more.

All of them worked a little, but when all it takes is one slug to break through your defences and cut a seedling in half at the stalk, "a little" really isn't good enough. You need something to drastically alter the slug equilibrium in the long term. And do you know what really does work? Ducks!

That is why we need ducks. If you have a garden of a reasonable size, I’d wager that you need ducks too!