Have you ever wandered into the farmyard and asked yourself, “Why doesn’t the duck simply fly away?”
There are three answers:
1. He does, sometimes. As you can see here in an older post.
2. He seasonally has wing feathers trimmed to help keep him down on the ground.
3. At nearly 11 pounds, he’s a little bit too chubby to really get off the ground.
In the early spring and fall, Ducky molts (loses) his old feathers and grows a nice new set in. This would prepare him for long, seasonal migration flights, if he were a wild duck. These young feathers, called ‘blood’ or ‘pin’ feathers, have a great blood supply and birds need to be handled carefully when they’re coming in. Once the pin feathers grow out completely into flight feathers, we can safely trim them back to keep our duck grounded.
Keeper Kent holds Ducky snugly with Duck’s feet tucked into his arm to keep Katy safe from his claws. Kent is also extending Duck’s right wing in this photo
Keeper Katy extends Duck’s left wing and counts the feathers to be trimmed.
With rounded bandage scissors, Keeper Katy starts to trim away feathers
You can see the small gap the missing feathers are creating in Duck’s wing, this is what stops him from flying.
Kent and Katy place Ducky down onto a scale for weighing. The rubber bowl gives his feet traction so he doesn’t slide off the metal scale.
Trimming feathers might look a little rough, but it doesn’t seem to bother our duck very much.
Jonathan lays the alpacas down, straightens them out, and ties their legs. It goes pretty quickly and easily.
Awww- Ray was so fluffy before! Now they all look like drenched crazy giraffe poodles.
What’s going to happen with the wool?
We divided the wool into “good quality” and “bad quality”. We’ll use the latter for enrichment for other animals as well as educational programs. We’re not sure yet what we will do with the “good quality”. Sell, make things…
What’s the difference between good and bad quality wool?
The good stuff is taken strictly from the body. The neck, legs and head isnt really good enough to use and its not as long as the hairs on the body
Sounds like a good fund raiser.
They are so skinny now. Imagine what our bears would look like if we shaved them!