Dispatching of the Ducks

It's been a while. Like over a week awhile. Don't worry all is good, we have been super-duper busy. I have so much I want to show you and tell you about! But first I need to tell you about the not so fun part. The ducks, all fifteen of them, no longer wonder around the yard digging craters and munching on bugs. They now reside in neatly packed food saver bags in our freezer. 

Mr. B's parents and brother came down Friday afternoon and helped us with the deed. It isn't something I would like to do again any time soon. Let's just say I had some not so pleasant images of bloody decapitated duckies that night when I went to bed. My poor babie birdie wordies.

Thank goodness we had people there to help. I didn't have to do the deed myself or clean them, thanks Rick and Andy! I just had to dunk 'em in the hot water and pluck the buggers. Have you ever plucked a duck? It's not a fun task. (there are some amazing step-by-step tutorials out there if on home butchering in case you were wondering. I studied up before D-day.) 

It needed to be done. We couldn't keep all twenty-one birds over the winter. We just couldn't; the food and water supply isn't there. We hadn't planned on all of them making it to the fall when we got them. Last year our survival rate was less than a third. When we ordered the babies in the spring we had planned on mother-nature doing more of her thing, you know, survival of the fittest.  She didn't so we needed to. 

Mr. B and I had a long discussion about who would stay and who would be sacrificed for the good of the many. We were going to keep a few ducks to hopefully replenish the flock in the spring but after some research we learned that runner ducks aren't the greatest at hatching and raising their own young. So after much consideration it was agreed on that they all would go. Then it came time for the to decide about the geese. We even went so far as to sex the geese to make sure we had a good ratio of males to females. We picked out one. We named him Christmas. 

Funny story about Christmas. We had dispatched all of the ducks and it was Christmas's turn at the chopping block. Andy, Mr. B's brother entered the run to catch him. We had kept the chosen few in the run for the morning to make it easier to ketch them. So any way Andy is chasing Christmas around the run and that silly goose gets up some speed, flaps his wings, and flew the coop. After that I didn't have the heart to have the boys chase him down. We let him live. No Christmas goose for us this year. 

So that is that. We offed all of our ducks and kept the six geese. Now if any of you have some good recipes for duck don't hesitate to share.