Days of our Ducklings

[trystinn]

As of this morning, Lucy has successfully hatched a dozen ducklings! *whew* It's really more than she can keep warm, she's a small duck even by Khaki Campbell standards. She's getting calm enough to let me pet her while she's resting with her ducklings, a very good sign.

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I palmed the two KC ducklings and snuck them in with Rincewind so that she had a few ducklings to take care of and so her lone survivor, Segunda, has siblings. We've nicknamed the other two Prima II and Trina. :D

Lucy hasn't noticed the swiping and as long as the ducklings are all the same color, ducks are fairly amiable about taking care of additional young it turns out. I've kept an eye on things, but not even the ducklings seem to have noticed the switcheroo.

Still a whole lotta ducklings:


Babs continues to take care of her 6 Black Swede ducklings with marvelous panache. So far they've enjoyed several swimming sessions (I of course was hyperventilating from outside the pen, convinced they were going to drown). Only one of the ducklings is crested like Mamma Babs.



We've moved 5 gallon waterers and feeders into each penned area, so the Mammas and babies are all set. The ducklings are also sampling a bit of the 'local product' grasses and one of them even ate her first bug! :D

As much as I'd adore keeping the ducklings around for a month or so, we have two more sets of hatchings due either later this month or the first week of September. I made the very difficult decision to allow Joe to pick up the Rouen ducklings he wants this Friday. I'll be putting up ads on Craigslist for the Black Swede ducklings, too. Thus is the hobby farm life.

Comments

[wild-heart.livejournal.com]

I'd say that your venture into duck production is successful. So really, you switched out babies and mama didn't notice or care? Maybe ducks can't count very high. ;-)

I just love these pictures and your comments. Don't get to much of anything but the insanity around here lately, but I always try to shoehorn in your posts.

[tryst-inn.livejournal.com]

Everyone kept assuring me "you'll almost never get hatchings from domestic ducks!" Oy. The Lady, She is laughing at us.

Lucy never did realize I'd swiped two of her ducklings and Rince never seemed surprised that her brood tripled in a second. They really are quite oblivious animals, but dear in their own way.

I appreciate whatever time you have to share. Your life is almost always so much busier than my own. Around here, we're just glorying in what time I have with Josh until the cruises start up again and enjoying a few weeks off from graduate school. I love it, but it's nice to have a little time off.

[wild-heart.livejournal.com]

We got a netbook to make it easier for Jay when he travels, and also so that his personal business doesn't get done on his work laptop. Thought it would be easy-peasy to get up and running. I started yesterday morning at 10 and just finished with the basic set-up, upgrades, router/wifi issues about half an hour ago. I tried to upgrade the RAM and after 4 attempts and countless changes to the BIOS and reboots, I wound up with tech support and we came to the conclusion that the memory module was defective. head-->desk During that time, I also fubar'd our wireless router settings and had to reconfigure both PCs in the house. Oh yeah, and yesterday also fit in 3 loads of wash, grocery shopping, vacuuming, and dusting.

Today - in what's left of today - I have to make several food items for the weekend (the usual suspects are coming over), finish up the .pdf form and .pdf that will be sent out to invite people to Jay's 64th birthday next month, wash floors, clean the bathroom, do more paperwork, scour my stove, and start on renovation tax credit paperwork. In the middle of this, I just got an email from our GC asking me a dozen questions which need answers immediately.

So yeah, it's a bit busy. We'll have 4 overnight guests this weekend and I've got to keep my mind on what we'll be doing rather than all the stuff that I still haven't done!

[tryst-inn.livejournal.com]

Similar here. Laundry to do, feedstore (need starter and regular poultry feed), emotional distancing of the Rouen ducklings (they are heading to their new home this afternoon), Josh to get to his chiropractic appointment, dog food to procure, a short trip to the market for milk, snacks and something for dinner tonight for the guys.

I've also got two phone calls to make to yell at folks: AT&T and Starcard.

Then there's the nuttiness of the weekend activities - Highland Games, classic car show, possible UU service on Sunday and about a dozen pieces of paper I need to shift around for the Grange.