Brown-o and White-o Lay Their First Eggs
May 5th 2008 21:00
Photo by Kok69. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
My sister and I could be ignorant when it came to farm animals. But then again, you could hardly blame us when a) we didn’t grow up on a farm and b) people seldom have ducks for pets. So we weren’t sure what was going on when Brown-o and White-o started piling up odds and ends in the garage, where they slept. We thought ducks only laid eggs when they were pregnant and given that Brown-o and White-o were both female, I thought it was biologically impossible. But lay eggs they did. One morning when we opened up the garage door to feed the ducks, we found an egg nestled in their make shift nests. My sister thought White-o was male even though I knew from the shape of her feathers that she was definitely female so she was convinced the egg was Brown-o’s. The next day there were two new eggs. My sister was still convinced the eggs were only Brown-o’s and that Brown-o was now having ducklings.
My sister set up an incubator at home. She got an empty egg carton and put the eggs in there with a towel to keep them warm. Days passed with no ducklings. Eventually I finally convinced my sister that both ducks must have been laying eggs.
My parents started using the eggs as food. Being Chinese, duck eggs were a normal part of their diet anyway so they would cook them instead of hen eggs. They tasted similar. The only difference was duck eggs are larger than hen eggs.
We felt sorry for our poor ducks. One day Brown-o was about to deliver an unusually large egg. Her feathers were puffed up and she looked congested and listless. Her abdomen was swollen and she looked liked a pregnant duck (well, in a way she was). Once she laid this particular egg her body went back to its normal slim shape and went back to sticking her bill into the garden, which she always did to amuse herself.
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