Jesse Renfro, Patrick Renfro’s son, chases the ducks Sunday afternoon by Wooster Lake. Renfro was planning to catch them and transfer them to the farm they will be taken care of during the winter.
As the temperature drops, the university facilities has been working on relocating the ducks living on Wooster Lake to get them out of the approaching winter weather.
“The conversation was, ‘when should we remove the ducks to their winter home?’” said Richard Jensen, physical plant utilities manager. “It was picked that we would (do) it after the week of homecoming, so that they would still be on Wooster during homecoming.”
The ducks will be staying at a farm about 10 miles north of Emporia and will be cared for by Patrick Renfro, building systems technician, according to Mark Runge, director of university facilities.
“They’ll be in our goat pen with the rest of our ducks, and be living with the pigs and the goats,” Renfro said.
The ducks are expected to stay with Renfro until early spring, around April or May depending on the weather.
In order to keep track of which ducks are meant to return to Wooster, they each have a leg tag that identifies them.
“Once we get a steady forecast, and the weather moderates, we’ll bring them back here,” said Runge.
The rounding up of the ducks was last Sunday, but they were unable to catch two of them. Until then they will be putting forth an effort to relocate these last two every day.
“A lot of times they use nets, which could damage and hurt them so we’re trying to do more of corralling and hand catching them,” Jensen said. “The person who is doing it, he’s an expert.”
Being under the care of Renfro will not be new for the ducks, as he is their main care taker the rest of the year. All but four of the ducks were Renfro’s to begin with.
“The nights have been getting below freezing a couple of nights,” Jensen said. “It was time to send them off to their winter home.”