 |
| So cute! |
 |
| Some of them trying to peek out of their shells! |
How did we get our hands on ducklings, do you ask? A friend who lives in town and has a beautiful pond behind their house had a nesting mallard nearby that, well, er, lost her head (probably a fox! Although I may be biased when it comes to predators eating fowl…). My friend asked if we had any broody hens and we were in luck! Four of the hens were trying to sit on eggs. Licorice was already occupied with a clutch, so we picked the next best hen and let her try.
A couple weeks later, I checked the nesting box in the morning and found some of the eggs had started to crack. What a miracle! I thought about leaving them under the mother hen but ultimately took them away. She and her broody sisters have a history of bickering over eggs, which ended in the death of some of our chicks. So, they were moved to the safety of a box and under the warmth of a heat lamp.
 |
| Aww! |
It took several hours for the four ducklings who survived and were ready to hatch–it’s a lot of work getting out of that shell! One ended up not making it which is always sad but, at the end of the day, we had three fluffy ducklings quacking away. While it would have been fun to keep them around, we found a better solution than our pondless property–my friend had a friend with a pond, a must for any duck. It wasn’t even a day before they were crawling into their water bowl, splashing away as happy as can be.
 |
| Taking their early morning bath. |
