Eugene weekly., December 27, 2012, Page 13, Image 13

ave
S the
D ucks
EVERYTHING
YOU EVER
WANTED TO
KNOW ABOUT
DUCKS
by Camilla Mortensen
I
f it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks
like a duck, then it’s a duck. Or a wigeon, which
is also a duck. Ducks are everywhere in Eugene,
but they are so much part of our Oregon landscape
that we often walk right by them with barely a
second glance. But because, through a quirk of
history, the University of Oregon’s sports teams
compete on the national stage as waterfowl, and through a
quirk of Nike the UO has tried to make these spatulate-
beaked waddling avians into muscled fighting machines,
EW would like to call attention to some of the wonders of
Anatidae Anseriformes: the ducks.
According to Kevin Roth, a wildlife biologist at Fern
Ridge Wildlife Area, about 20,000 to 30,000 ducks pass by
Eugene along the Pacific Flyway each year, and many
Lane County residents get up in the dark hours of dawn in
hopes of bagging one of these ducks that may migrate
along the flyway for 1,000 miles to land in the Beaver
State: wood ducks, mallards (the most common one you’ll
see, Roth says), American wigeons and northern pintails to
name a few. According to Oregon State’s Bruce Dugger, an
associate professor of wildlife, ducks are popular as
domestic birds; as wild animals they bring a number of
ecological benefits, and across the world many are
endangered. Dugger wonders what would happen if the
UO put its mascot money where its mouth is and started an
effort to save the ducks. And as football season draws to an
end with the Ducks playing in the Fiesta Bowl, duck-
mating season is on the way and that opens up a whole
other can of worms about the wild world of ducks.
DUCK, DUCK, WEBFOOT, GOOSE
Dave Holderread of Holderread Waterfowl Farm and
Preservation Center, located in the Cascade foothills
outside Corvallis, wrote the book on ducks. Literally. His
Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks has been in print in one
incarnation or another since 1978. Holderread, who has
been raising ducks since he was in elementary school, says
interest in farming ducks has increased in the past 10 to 15
years. The city of Eugene has recently begun discussing
increasing the numbers of ducks, chickens and other
backyard farm animals it allows in response to the
increased demand for local food production.
Holderread has about 50 breeds of ducks and other
waterfowl on his farm and says, “Ducks are much more
versatile than chickens — and I have nothing against
chickens.” He says ducks are more resistant to parasites
and diseases and “they are a bird that are perfectly happy
in a totally wet environment, which chickens abhor. Ducks
are out there like, ‘Isn’t this cool?’”
Holderread adds, “It just kind of makes me chuckle the
way people struggle with chickens. There’s a bird made for
this climate, and it’s not chickens.”
Ducks share the same bird family (Anatidae) as geese
and swans. There are no invasive ducks in Oregon,
according to Dugger, though there is at least one invasive
swan — the mute swan — listed by the Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW).
Holderread writes in his book that there are two distinct
species of duck that are commonly domestically raised —
mallards and muscovy ducks. Muscovys are slightly less
water repellant and most domestic muscovys can still fly.
Muscovys also have “talon-like toenails,” Holderread
writes, enabling them to perch in trees. Mallard wing sizes
do not increase when the domestic birds are bred to be
larger and so most domestic mallards can’t fly. Ironically
the UO mascot, derived from Disney’s Donald Duck is the
pekin duck, “bred to sleep, eat and grow really fast,” and
are so big they don’t get around really well, Holderread
says. Pekins, the typical white duck you see portrayed in
pop culture, were bred in China from mallards.
GoDucks.com features an explanation of how the UO
came to be the Ducks, saying that the students originally
called themselves Webfooters after some patriotic New
Englanders who made their way west and because the state
of Oregon used to be called the Webfoot State before
switching to the Beaver State in 1909. But according to a
1952 article in Western Folklore called “The Constant
Webfoot,” that’s not quite right. The Webfoot moniker was
originally a derogatory nickname Californians gave gold
LONDON :LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMAN ... AND EDDOWES, SHREWSBURY, 1838
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