Qvack!
A-laying
The primary purpose of ducks is stirring up the farm ponds and eating the mosquito larva. (Shh… don’t tell my wife I think they’re simply cute to watch!)
Jeffries Family Farm
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.Oven, Spit & Pit Roaster Pigs!
Enjoy Our Pork!
Enjoy pork butchered in our family’s Vermont state inspected on-farm butcher shop here on Sugar Mountain Farm. Affordable quality pork from our family farm to your family’s table. One time purchases or weekly, biweekly and monthly CSA boxes available from $40 each. Save buying in bulk as a whole, half or quarter pig. See the Pork Page for details.
i have ducks and there is no way they would end up for dinner! My hubby thought that that was the reason for getting them but i have fallen in love with them. They really are so funny.
I want to thank you for all of the information you provide on your site. We refer to it constantly and learn so much. We are just getting started and hope to some day fallow your lead in having a working pig farm and small butcher shop. I would like to know more about FDA require ments and about all the inspection process so the meat can be sold to resurants and so on, it seems so complicated but it can’t be that hard!!:) Also can just anyone become a lisensed inspector? Thank you again for all of your information. It is so neat that you are helping others like us find our way in the pig farming world. Plus I am looking for Hereford and Spot bores to AI my sows to so if you have a catalog on your bores or news letters. Id love to receive them. Thanks again Kelly
I don’t know the details about becoming an inspector. For information about selling meat check with your state department of agriculture as they’ll be the first level that you’ll be working with. Many states have a pamphlet for beginning farmers that outlines what licenses are necessary. For information about seeing up a butcher shop they’ll also likely have information and check out the USDA’s Very Small Plant Outreach Program web page which has a lot of helpful information. The USDA rather than FDA which covers meat inspection.
We don’t do AI but I had looked into that at one point and there are quite a few places on the web that sell the semen and AI tools. From what I’ve been told by people who do AI work, pigs are one of the easier animals to Artificially Inseminate. Here’s a few google searches to start with: AI Swine.
purchase the pig & duck duck choose
We have 6 Muscovey ducks (pets) and I make cream cheese (for home consumption mainly). Currently the dogs get the whey, but I was wondering if I could feed it to the young Muscovey ducklings instead?
Our ducks sometimes drink from the whey troughs and I have not seen any ill effects.
Beautiful farm! I have a question about duckling behavior that I can’t seem to find no matter how much I look. I have two pekin ducklings, they are eating and drinking well but do not move around very much. They are a week+ old. In spite of all the reading that I’ve done some of their behaviors are hard to understand having never experienced it before. Thanks for any tips you have.
Young ducklings are kind of awkward. They should be able to move to food, water and bedding. Don’t have open water for them yet as they’re not ready for it.
we get 40 mallards each year a few weeks before they fly,,i feed them cracked corn,but will they eat whole barley?
I would expect so since they eat some seeds in nature but I’m not a duck expert and I don’t feed grains. I would be interested in hearing your experience.
Thanks for all the information you provide on your site. I am planning to start a pastured pig farm together with pastured ducks for meat (hope to reach 2,000 ducks in 3 years and 150 finishing pigs), as there is no limitation on number of ducks to raise in Quebec canada. It is difficult to find information about pastured ducks (supplement feed requirement) and more especially how to rotate them on pasture together with the pig pasture rotation. do you have any recommendation about this subject? thanks a lot for your help.
The ducks I do sort of as support staff. They eat snails, mosquitoes and break parasite life cycles as well as trimming under the fence lines. I don’t do anything particular for feeding them but then I’m not trying to produce duck meat. Ours just get the pasture and what they scrounge.
thanks!