The new kids part 2, a box of ducklings

We've had a weird winter, I don't know if it's just that it has been so wet, or that it has been cold but not *that* cold, but there have been an awful lot of early ducklings around.
The flooded paddocks had quite a few little families paddling around and I got a call from Miss A in early June to say there were tiny ducklings running around our yard looking for their mother, Luckily all were reunited and waddled off together after making themselves at home in our pool.

The scattered Empty egg shells around the fish pond at the front of our house belong to another family of ducks who left several months ago.
And then there is wild duck.
Wild duck just appeared one day, swimming in the duck ponds and waddling around under the trees. Her dark brown feathers camouflage into her surroundings well enough that no one is sure when she first showed up. At first she kept to those areas, but soon realised she could sneak late afternoon treats with our own birds, who for some reason didn't really seem bothered by her presence. I wondered when we'd see her snuggled up with Stevie and the gang in the coop, maybe then we'd give her a name, but she never did. Apparently our ducks don't like her that much.

Wild duckie on the left helps herself to the ducks drinking water and Tanqueray

She did sun herself in the middle of the yard and then one day she disappeared. Maybe she found herself a boyfriend? or a better yard?
Last Wednesday there was a wild duck hen having a swim in the duck ponds, she got out, preened and waddled past me like I wasn't there. Straight to the mass of bushes under the oak tree and vanished. I think she has a nest under there but I can't find it. Maybe she's our wild duck? All I know is I'm pretty sure Bonnie and Whitney are far to possessive for the father of her kids to be Stevie. I think...

I didn't actually think we'd have ducklings in our living room again. We love our ducks, they are beautiful mud monsters, but we don't need more duck eggs, we are hoping for more chickens and even if I thought we would be able to process ducks after getting attached, no one was overly excited about the meat.
And yet, here we are...

Roughly a week ago a workmate let me know she had wild ducklings, their mother had been run over and a few had passed. She now had 9 and wasn't sure how to look after them but had managed for about 4 days. Did I want them?
I said no
at first
and that evening I found myself wrapping a massive cardboard box in car wrap vinyl.
Rushing to cut window holes and attach hardware cloth.
filling it with wood shavings and cleaning old food and water dispensers. Trying to remember what we had put in the brooder the first time around. a dirt clump here for ducks to explore, a mirror there, a big soft toy to snuggle, electric heat plate warmer in one corner. Old paint tray with hardware cloth on it and the water container on there.
All while next to a box of 9 tiny ducklings peeped and covered anything and everything in food and water.

As usual it took a while for the babies to go near the warmer. pushing them all under doesn't work. You have to wait for them to sleep in a pile and put it over them. It didn't take them long to find their new food and water area. The next day they explored their new home, attacking mint tied to the windows, digging through the dirt wad.

On their second evening we gave them a supervised swim which they loved! For such tiny ducklings, they seem to repel water better than I expected and are a lot better at drying themselves and preening afterwards than I thought, maybe it's a wild duck thing, or maybe they are slightly older and spent more time with their mother than I thought.

This time around, I made sure to place their brooder windows up higher, our jerks kicked wood shavings through their windows and our ducks pooped through them. The ducklings are growing super fast (as ducks do) and it's not unusual to see their little faces pop up in the windows as they watch you.
I've added a couple of small boxes to their home which they love climbing all over, the sounds of their tiny duck feet on the cardboard scared them at first but now it's one of their favourite things to stomp around on.

On their first weekend with us we finally had a chance to rearrange Tanky's old outdoor run, it had to be all chicken wire as tiny birds can fit through the gaps in the plastic garden netting I usually use as gates. The ducks are too young to fly yet so it doesn't have to be too tall. A big Plastic container full of water with a ramp for swimming was plonked in and we sprinkled some grass on their water.
The ducklings ran and explored, fighting over worms, digging in the grass...

 

they discovered their new pool, running up and down the ramp, paddling, dabbling, diving to the bottom, plopping off the side onto their friends
The big kids came over to investigate

'Ugh. what are those? why are they here?' Stevie, Whitney and Bonnie Stared together (probably more interested to see if the ducklings were getting treats they weren't) They quacked and the ducklings ran to them, but the big ducks weren't interested in sticking around.
Not too long from now I'll have to switch from chick starter feed to grower so the ducklings don't have too much protein in their diets, usually this would happen at about 4-5 weeks old but I'm not sure of their age so I think it'll happen as their adult feathers start coming in. It really won't help to have angel wing in wild ducks that can fly.
When they do have adult feathers or when the weather is warmer we will extend their run and give them a shelter outdoors so they can live out there and get used to foraging and living outside.
Eventually we'll take the run away and they can wander. We have plenty of other wild ducks around, flying over from the lakes that are close by and wandering around in the paddocks, I imagine at some point our wild ducks may want to wander off and join them to start families of their own, to go off and lead wild duck lives in wild duck places and that'd be nice, I'm not going to make them stay.
But we'll see how things go

 

The new kids, Tanky the tiny bantam hen

It is part way through Spring, hoping for sun to help my seedlings grow and mostly getting non stop rain that makes the weeds and grass grow.
Also hoping for an email soon from an Orpington breeder to say fertile eggs are available
although we do have our hands full right now...

At the end of July we went out after work to a local rest stop to collect a tiny hen we had fallen in love with, she was so fluffy you couldn't see her tiny legs, we named her Tank, which became Tanqueray. After chasing her until the sun went down, we were lucky enough to find her roosting low in a tree, she was bundled into a box and brought home for inspection and quarantine.
 

 

It's Important to quarantine any new bird you bring in, it gives you (I'd heard 4 weeks is recommended so that's what we went for) a period of time to observe and make sure your new friend has no bugs or illness they can pass on to your current flock.

A check up seemed to suggest that Tanky was pretty healthy, her eyes were bright, feathers nice and shiny, skin looked good, no lice, clean butt, only problem was she had leg mites, which feathered leg chickens are more susceptible to

 

 

(Photo is actually a few days later and looked a lot better) we trimmed her nails, cleaned her legs with a soft toothbrush and applied vaseline. We also applied baby oil with a few drops of tea tree oil. The Idea is to clean out bug poop and dirt, then smother the mites. The oil was applied once a week-ish for at about 4-5 weeks.

 

Time to pull out the broody cage! only as she is not broody the cage got wood shavings as bedding, she got a dust bathing area and a roost for sleeping and to spy out the window. In the evenings we would let her out to wander around and stretch her tiny legs, she soon learnt to yell at the top of her voice to let her out of her cage whenever she heard us coming.

Tanqueray is a mottled Pekin Bantam, a little sweetie with an adorable voice. None of our original hens squat (at least that I've seen) not for the rooster, or the drake or any of us, but Tanky did. Within about 2 weeks she would shuffle into a small box in her home and lay a tiny egg. She's a pretty consistent layer actually which makes me wonder if she is still quite young.

 

Tanky and the first egg she laid at her new home

 

 

Top - Duck egg,  Middle - Wyandotte egg, Bottom - Bantam egg



Every day she ate until her little crop bulged and gained a bit more confidence, she loved dust bathing in my frangipani pots and sitting on the window sill watching the outdoor birds, trilling if she saw a threat. plopping out on the carpet and exploring the living room. She learnt quickly to use the grandpa feeder and scarfs sunflower seeds like nobody's business.

Tanqueray post Frangipani dustbath

Eventually though, it was time to integrate her into the flock. It was something we had been worrying about, our ducks and Wyandottes are huge! and Sunny in particular is quite stroppy. Tanky was completely different than all of them, timid, tiny, fluffy legs, different comb... we had enough trouble re integrating Lacey when she had gotten over an illness.
We started by letting Tanky live in a netted off area of the coop, she had a nesting box and roosting area and when the big kids were let out for the day, we could extend it to give her more room. She had to get used to the idea of the coop being home, and all the birds could see each other but not touch.
The big kids were not impressed, coming in to gawk and complain.

After about a week of this we put up the temporary run outdoors, wire chicken netting stretched around heavy garden pots with stakes in them. Tanky was a much better flyer than we were used to so her run was taller than me and netting was stretched over the top. We bought a small chicken coop for her to shelter in while outdoors and I built a shelter for her feeder as we were having a crazy wet winter.
During the day she was carried out to get used to the yard and the big kids could get used to her being there too. She would dig around in the grass, sit in the garden pots spying on everyone and then climb up to the nesting area of her little coop and lay a little egg.
At night she was carried back to the coop to her netted off sleeping area.

Lacey Inspecting the new run from the outside

The new shelter to keep Tanky and her feeder dry

 Another week later and she was let loose into general population

Blue, Lacey and Lizzy mostly ignored her, but the ducks let her know to stay away from them and Sunny Chased her away from treats. We made sure to give Tanqueray her own pile of seeds and there were still 2 feeders out plus access to water in enough places that she could always get to it. She dustbathed, laid her daily tiny eggs in the coop and dug around the yard, hiding up on the water tank and trying to stay out of the big chickens way. Sometimes we find her roosting with the big kids, sometimes we have to pick her up out of the nest box and put her up with them.

In Early October, Tanqueray started spending more and more time in the nesting box

Uh oh, squeaky puffy tiny hen was going broody! We weren't worried about the fact that she stopped laying eggs, but she was leaving little feathers in her nest. Sometimes broodies will pluck tummy feathers so their skin touches their eggs and helps keep them warm.
Back to the broody cage for Tanky, we didn't want her to raise chicks or waste away trying. She was quite determined! it took just over a week for her to want to race around the yard again rather than immediately run back to a nest box.

Broody puff

This morning Tanqueray laid her first tiny egg since being broody, she headed off to the yard to have morning sunflower seeds with the big kids and do whatever it is they do all day. I'm glad it's all going well, the hens all seem to be relatively happy together.

But Tanky isn't our only new addition, we also have 9 ducklings.... 9!!!