THE DUCKS ARE THRIVING!

I feel like my book review blog is turning into Animal Kingdom, but I wanted to keep you all updated on the ducks' progress. 

The ducks are now just over two weeks old and they're growing by leaps and bounds!  As you can see in the photos, they've doubled in size since last week.  They're now twice as tall as the soda can.  All of the ducks are healthy and thriving.  I even got them to eat poultry feed out of my hand tonight! 

Since they've outgrown the plastic bin we originally kept them in, we've moved them to a cage in the lower garage to keep them safe and warm.  They're quickly outgrowing their current cage, as well as getting too smelly, and our plan is to move them into the shed in the yard this weekend.  My husband created this entire system when we first raised ducks a few years ago and it's certainly working.  There's plenty of room for the ducks in the shed and we'll keep them penned in until they're fully grown and mature enough to be let loose.

Once the ducks are given their freedom, predators are a problem as I mentioned in my earlier blog.  We've always been worried about coyotes and foxes, but we now have a new concern.  On Monday evening there was a very large black bear in our yard.  By the time I found my camera, the bear had already moved downstream and this was the best picture I could get.  The bear is the dark lumpy looking blob in the upper stream bed.  We always knew that there were bears in the area, but this is the first one we've had visit our house.

I grew up in Newark, New Jersey where the yards were either non-existent, plain old dirt or cement, and not on a farm, so it's not like any of this animal husbandry is natural for me.  But even for a city girl, it's pretty amazing to watch the different stages the ducks go through before they reach adulthood.  I have to give my husband credit, he does one hundred percent of the work and I get to pet the ducks and take the pictures.

Our original flock of ducks seemed to work out a great system to protect themselves.  They all huddled together to sleep on the stream bank, but one or two always stayed awake to guard the rest.  If an animal approached, they'd signal a general alarm and suddenly all of the ducks would jump into the water, quacking and flapping their wings to drive the intruder away.  Their alarm system worked for us as well, since they quack and flap whenever someone pulls into the driveway!  Hopefully our new flock will have the same instincts. 

Happy Easter everyone, or as Dewey, Louie, Huey and Daisy would say, "QUACK, QUACK!"