Baby ducks and Hindu temples

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I went on another vet student adventure - this time to visit a traditional duck egg farm out by Solo (50 km east or so of Jogja). This was a trip just for me, so I certainly appreciated the kind ride (from Andre, the same vet student I went with the day before). Unfortunately, this time we didn’t gain any elevation, and we absolutely baked in the car. The air conditioning left something to be desired, and so it was a tough toss up between clean, hot air, or open windows and mouthfuls of motorbike exhaust.

Visiting the farm was really great. Baby ducks galore! In this area, ducks are raised to be egg layers more than for meat. This farm incubates the eggs and then sells the day old ducklings. Therefore the female ducklings are more valuable, and so I learned to determine the sex of baby ducks. The hatchery was “traditional”, meaning they had no electricity. The incubators were warmed with kerosene lamps. The sky blue duck eggs are lined up in wooden cabinets, heated by these lamps beneath, and the manually turned 4 times a day.

I was asked several times if I had any recommendations to the farmer. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about incubating duck eggs. It is hard to explain at times that my fancy American veterinary education doesn’t really include anything practical.

For lunch we stopped to get traditional Javanese food. Tradition normally makes me weary, but I decided I had been here long enough to be able to handle it. Turns out traditional mean trays of scary looking meats and fishes, sitting on the counter, tempting the flies. I chose to get the soup. My friends had the fried buffalo skin (skin is a euphamism here for chunks of fat) and tripe. I had one of the hard boiled duck eggs in a bowl on the table - you know they are duck eggs since they are blue! Only after I ate it did they explain to me that these eggs sit in a salt mixture for several weeks before being cooked. Then who knows how long they sit on the table waiting to be sold without refrigeration.

Luckily it took several hours for the pre-formed staph toxin to work its magic. Before I knew anything was wrong, we had time to visit the Prambanan temples! These are beautiful Hindu temples, which are always considered the little brother to the famous Borobudur temples to the north. We arrived right as the sun was low in the sky, it was really beautiful and a really lovely time to be there. The nausea courtesy of the duck egg kicked in as we were heading out. I convinced myself it was just dehydration and over-heating from many hours of sun and heat that day. I kept trying to convince myself of that for the rest of the ride home, with disastrous results when I didn’t get out of the car quickly enough when the contents of my stomach decided to violently evacuate. Oh no! So embarrassing! Luckily, Andre felt as bad, if not worse, for feeding me food that made me sick, and I felt for vomiting in his car. He took me right home, though only after I abjectly refused to see a doctor. I’m not certain about the standard of medical care around here, but I certainly wasn’t going to the hospital until I was really sick. I did, however, spend the evening texting everyone I knew explaining in great detail how I was sick. I didn’t want to die of dehydration alone in my room. Oh drama queen!

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Photos

Eek!
I wanted to put them all in my mouth!