By Evan Noey
Meet our youngest guest blog writer yet! This week’s blog article comes from Evan Noey, who spent last summer doing the not-so-glamorous work of duck habitat restoration at the Rancho Esquon Duck Hatchery. He’s here to share what he learned, and why the dirty work matters.
As a Boy Scout, I get to have special opportunities working at the Rancho Esquon Duck Hatchery, where I work with a very nice lady named Diane Valentine.
Working at the hatchery, I’ve learned so much more about ducks than I knew before, and it’s been very interesting. I’ve even gotten to release ducks on the property. Rancho Esquon covers over a thousand acres of farmland.
The hatchery was started by Rancho Esquon in 2001 and is fully funded by them. They receive small donations from volunteers, but according to Diane, the hatchery manager, the most valuable donation is time.
So how does the hatchery conserve and preserve ducks in need? What is the process of taking a duck from a field and releasing it into the wild? It starts when the hatchery receives eggs from local farmers who find them in their fields, or when the hatchery staff go out and collect duck eggs themselves. Once the eggs arrive at the hatchery, they are placed in incubators. After they hatch, the ducklings are moved to pens, where they grow until they’re about five weeks old. Then, they are released into the wild on the farm.
Boy Scouts and other volunteers help in this process by cleaning pens and feeding ducks. Some people think the job is just about playing with baby ducks, but in reality, it’s a stinky job and full of mosquitoes! Over the course of working with Diane from April through August, I’ve learned a lot about duck habitats and what they need to survive in the wild. The hatchery provides pens that shield the ducklings and give them safe spaces to grow and thrive.
The Rancho Esquon Duck Hatchery is a very interesting place to volunteer over the summer, and I’m very thankful to Diane and everyone at Rancho Esquon for letting me write this blog and teaching me so much more about ducks than I ever knew. I hope that by reading this, you’ll also consider volunteering at Rancho Esquon.
