Richard the duck

Richard, our most recently acquired duck, is a mucky little thing. Well big thing. He's actually huge. Since we adopted him he's been kept in the barn in our growers pen with the other chicks that were of a similar age. He's outgrown it now and to be honest, he's getting very smelly. I'm saying that and I have 4 horses in there who don't smell anywhere near as much. So tonight we introduced him to the other ducks and he's spending his first night with them in their coop. I've probably picked the most gloomy, windy and stormy night of late but he's got a roof over his head so should be ok from that aspect and fingers crossed he isn't bullied.
Grace carried him from the barn to the outside area. He cuddled in to her which she loved. The plan for this back area is to clear it out and have a good think about what we can do with it. People say goats live well on rough, nettle land but when I read up about them they seem to be selective eaters and wouldn't take kindly to the nettles area? Either way we are going to extend the duck area to include the orchard so they get to roam around more. Given the damage the geese have done by bullying the ducks in the past, we're separating the back of the barn and the orchard so the geese and ducks shouldn't come into contact with each other. There's quite a bit of work involved so Ste is taking care of that ad and when he can.
Also we have some huge mushrooms growing in the horse muck!! This is pure muck so I am going to see what we can do about growing our own safe mushrooms next year.