City slickers play Old MacDonald: Now ducks and goats join the chickens

Hedahl raises two types of domesticated ducks, khaki Campbells and Indian runners, in her backyard in Seattle’s Wedgwood neighborhood. The colorful duck eggs sell for $6 a dozen out of her home.Photo by Erika Schultz/Seattle Times

Around Puget Sound, urban farming has extended to various small-plot livestock, with lots of city chickens, and now ducks for eggs and goats for milk.

By Tan Vinh
Seattle Times
Mar 9, 2011

Excerpt:

In the name of urban farming, there were a lot of ways BJ Hedahl could have transformed her spacious, fenced backyard in Seattle’s Wedgwood neighborhood: putting in an organic garden, a beehive or a chicken coop maybe.

But no. Hedahl wanted ducks. Or rather duck eggs: richer, denser, with yolks bigger than your chicken variety, she said.

Here on a recent afternoon were her four ducks, hopping out of the kiddie wading pool that’s plopped in the middle of her yard, each webfoot capable of producing about 300 eggs every year.

As one after another waddled by, I couldn’t help but do the math. That’s a lot of quiche.

Read the complete article here.