Indian Runner Ducks - not your average waddler

If you’ve never seen a group of Indian Runner Ducks in action, you’ve missed one of life’s finer moments.  Indian Runners are quite slender, and they stand upright, stretching tall.  Imagine a bowling pin, add a beak and legs, and you’ll have a good mental picture of this breed of ducks.  I’ve also heard them described, in shape, as the umbrella handle and stem.  I like the bowling pin image better.  It fits.

They’re busy little bowling pins, too.  Indian Runners never seem to walk anywhere.  They’re always moving at a run.  It’s not an awkward waddle, either, like other ducks.  They’re graceful and surprisingly quick in their upright mode.  When they move in groups, they run, turn, and sway with the coordinated precision of highly-trained synchronized swimmers.  

This style of movement, combined with the breeds strong flocking instinct, makes runner ducks attractive training stock for trainers of herding dogs.  My own introduction to this breed was at a herding demonstration.  The trainer worked his older dogs on sheep.  When the young-dog-in-training’s turn came, the trainer released four runner ducks in the arena, then put the border collie pup to work herding them left, then right, and eventually back into their carrier pen.  I’d stopped at the arena to watch the dogs work, but it was the ducks that captured  more of my attention. 

They’re smaller ducks, about 4 to 4 ½ pounds for drakes, maybe 3 ½ pounds for hens.  They produce small to medium carcasses.  The taste is excellent, but that’s not their best use.  Often called the Leghorns of the duck family, the prolific Indian Runner hen can lay 200 or more white eggs a year – or mostly whitish.  (Sometimes they have a greenish tint.)  That’s close to the egg-laying capacity of some of the top egg strains of chickens.  The egg size is comparable to that of a large chicken egg, averaging 30 to 34 ounces a dozen.  

They come in a wide range of colors and patterns, more than any other breed of ducks.  Mine are Fawn and White, one of the more common patterns in my region.  There also are plain fawns, plain whites, blacks, blues, chocolates, buffs, silvers, the striking penciled Indian Runners, and the impressive grays, which also are known as trout.  Trouts

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