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...
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
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