Recycling with Ducks

If you have kids, you know about food waste. Or you have a superpower that I don't. We have a fly problem on the farm (and in our house-- a post for another day), so if food is left out for more than 2 seconds, flies land and poop on it. Our kids don't eat stuff in 2 seconds. They take a bite, realise that life is waiting, leave and return. Sometimes we just wash it, but in general I take flies pretty seriously. Which is to say, we're working on actual sitdown (onthefloor)-having-proper-conversation meals-- but it is not simple, and there is waste.

Enter the ducks. Firstly, they hunt flies. Which is already awesome.

Our animals have already added a whole new layer of efficiency to our recycling system, and it fills me with so much excitement that I'm shaking as I type this. Ok. That's the coffee.

Previous system: Food waste-- Worms--- worm castings--- trees. Not too bad. But a pretty short cycle.

NOW:

Food waste (usually freshish fruit and vegetable scraps)-- guinea pigs (then, what they don't eat in a couple of hours)-- Ducks (then, what they haven't eaten by evening) -- Worm bin (then... and this is super cool-- the soldier fly larvae come and start eating stuff before the worms, which creates a pretty good physical split in the bin between my much loved worms, which I don't want the ducks to eat, and soldier fly larvae, who I DO want the ducks to eat)-- ducks-- back into worm bin(worm castings)-- trees

Natural born hunters