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The vineyard ‘quack squad’
At 9.45 a.m. each day, more than 1,000 Indian Runner ducks are released for the first of two sorties at South Africa’s Vergenoegd vineyard in Stellenbosch.
Their mission: seek and eat thousands of tiny white dune snails feasting on budding vines.
“Before we had the ducks we had to put down snail bait, a pesticide. But, for the past nine years I have been here we’ve used very little snail bait, almost nothing, because the ducks eat all the snails and other insects,” vintner and horticulturalist, Marlize Jacobs, told Reuters.
Used for centuries in Asia to control pests, the ducks stand upright like penguins and are slim enough to fit between rows of vines. And they do not waddle, they run.
The flock, which started with six ducks in 1983, gives Vergenoegd extra points in the wine industry’s sustainability certification process as the 57-hectare vineyard now uses so little chemicals it does not need to declare them, Jacobs said. (Reuters)
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