Quackers duck chooses chicken chums at Leicester's City Farm
From the brow of her bill to the tip of her tawny tail feathers, Coffee is unmistakably a duck.
But try telling her that.
The 18-month-old Indian Runner is so sure she is a chicken that attempts by staff at Gorse Hill City Farm, where she lives, to integrate her with other ducks have been abandoned.
Hilary Marshall, deputy manager at the farm in Anstey Lane, Leicester, said: "From day one, she fought with the cockerels and ate with the chickens. She will only go to bed with the chickens.
"She doesn't roost and she doesn't cluck, but she prefers to be with the chickens.
"When she arrived, we tried to put her with the ducks on the pond, but she was not happy and kept escaping.
"She wasn't fighting with the other ducks she just wouldn't stay with them, so now we just let her do what she wants."
You will not catch Coffee clucking away or perched on a roosting pole in the shed she calls her home.
But by day she is never far away from the chickens as they strut around the farmyard and at night she is happier to bed down with a dozen chickens than the ducks, who sleep just a matter of feet away.
Hilary said she put Coffee's confusion down to her upbringing.
"It's the fact that she grew up with two chickens," she said. "She's set in her ways.
"We could train her to be with the other ducks, but that would mean her being unhappy and we see no reason to do that."
Rachel and David Carmichael, from Knighton, Leicester, visited the farm yesterday with grandchildren Conor and Charlie Dash.
Conor, eight, said: "I've never heard of anything so silly before."
Charlie, seven, added: "It's a bit unusual, but I think it's funny. "
Comments
by elle, narborough
Thursday, February 18 2010, 11:37AM
“Coffee and the chickens are fab. We live next door to the owners. And I loved letting roam free in our huge garden. After the fox snatched coffee's mate cream. She hatched to runner ducks of her own. The neighbours went away for the bank holiday late May. The kids and I baby sat the duck and chickens. We had been waiting to see if any ducks would come of the eggs she had laid and starting nesting on. It was a very cold and wet weekend. We looked in the coffee. Suddenly, we noticed something moving from underneath her feathers. And there appeared to little ducklings. We were so thrilled that immediately we text the nealon family to say they were pround owners of two more ducks. She is a very special duck or should I say chcken. She became very protective over the chickens. Sometimes, I would hear her clucking like mad. So I knew something was up in the garden. Most of the time she was telling off the chickens for getting into my vegetable patch area. Or a cat was in the garden. Now that I have seen coffee and chickens again. I will definitely come to see them at the farm.XX”