Torridge Valley Trout Farm Poultry

Call Ducks are the smallest Domestic Duck. They are easy to look after and are inexpensive to feed. Their requirements are as follows.
1) A secure place for your birds, particularly at night. This can be a shed, a poultry house with a run, or a fenced-in garden with a coop but I feel the ideal would be an enclosure. This means that the Calls can stay out 24 hours a day in a vermin-proof pen.
2) Food: this consists of chicken layer pellets and whole wheat. If you can obtain duck pellets so much the better. You should also give them access to small quantities of mixed poultry grit containing limestone chips. This is for grinding down food in the gizzard, and for extra calcium for the duck in the laying season. Make sure the particles are small enough for Calls. Break up the larger pieces if necessary.
3) Water: ducks need water to drink and also to bathe. This does not mean that you have to have a large pond; a tin bath sunk in the ground or anything similar will do. Make sure the birds can easily get out–a duckboard will suffice. Of course if you have a pond it will mean that you do not have to clean it out and add fresh water so often.
Call Ducks become very tame and will be a pleasing addition to your home and family. Children in particular find that because they are small enough to handle they become irresistible. Also they are extremely amusing to watch and will give you hours of pleasure with their inquisitive behaviour.

The Cream Legbar is a crested chicken which is a true autosexing breed which means that you can tell the sex of the chicks by the colour of the feathers. It is an old pure breed which originated in the 1930s as a cross between Brown Leghorns and Barred Rock with some Araucana blood in them. They are very firm, muscular birds with a wedge shaped body which is broad at the shoulders and tapers towards the rear. The wings are large carried close to the body and the back is long and flat. The head has a strong beak and large single erect comb with five to seven even spikes. They have a crest which lies at the back of the head behind the comb which is small in the male and larger in the female. The face is smooth with pendant cream or white ear-lobes, long thin wattles and the neck is long and well feathered. They have a yellow beak, red face, comb and wattles. The yellow legs and feet are strong and unfeathered with four evenly spaced toes.

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