Tiny Grass

We are now one week into our duck project, so I thought I would give everyone a recap of what we have been doing so far.

We knew that our ducklings were scheduled to hatch and be mailed on Monday, March 26th. Since I knew they were coming by priority mail, I expected them to arrive on Wednesday. That Monday night, I was furiously trying to finish our brooder setup. I pretty much used the same type of brooder setup as The New Agrarian uses here. Let me give the parents out there some advice…it is really hard to set up a brooder, or really, any cage, with wood shaving when you are with an almost-two-year-old and a four-year-old. Basically, the entire room became a brooder.

The next morning, as Arp and I were still groggy and enjoying our coffee, the phone rings. I see on the caller ID that it is the postal service. Oh my gosh! They must be here! I jump in my excitement and hand the phone to Arp (I sometimes have a slight phone phobia, but that is another story). So I hear Arp talking excitedly, “Can we come right now?! Do I need ID?!” When he hangs up he tells me, “They told me, ‘Just ask for the birds. We all know they’re here.’” I guess the birds were somewhat of a sensation at the post office. After Arp leaves for the pickup, I work really hard to finish up the brooder and fill the water jugs. It took me quite some time to find the reference somewhere or other for how much sugar/honey to add to the water for the first watering of ducklings (just for energy after their long trip). The kids keep asking, “When is Daddy going to be back with the ducks?!”

The first thing I hear when Arp walks in the door is the most loud cheeping that I have ever heard. I walk into the kitchen with a look of wonder and ask hesitantly, “Were there any dead ones?” There were no dead ones, but he tells me there were some “extras”. Extras? How many? So many that my husband couldn’t count them all. And the extras are all chickens!! When he checked the ducklings at the post office, he had trouble even picking them out from among all the chickens. Now, I knew the hatchery had warned me that they could send some chickens in the box for warmth, but I figured they would send 2 or 3 of them. At the final count we did the next day, we found that, along with our 5 ducks, they had included 19 chicks! Oh my! There is no way I’d have room for 19 chickens in my little suburban backyard.

Here is a picture of us unloading the ducks and chicks. Note the lone duck in the mass of chicks. Ducklings are way cuter than chicks, huh?

The ducklings and chicks all looked very healthy. As per the instructions that came with them, we dutifully dipped all their beaks into the water containers as we put them in the brooder. They all drank heartily, especially the ducks. They also began eating right away. They had plenty of food in their feeder and in a small bowl, but we also sprinkled the food on the floor of the brooder. We had the wood shavings all covered up with old shirts so that the babies wouldn’t mistakenly eat wood chips instead of food. We noticed right away that the ducklings and chicks would try to eat any stray wood shaving, so we were careful to cover them all up as much as possible for those fist few days. After that, the ducks seemed to be able to mouth the wood chips and feel that they weren’t food.

Here’s a pic of all the ducks together on the first day:

Yes, our mystery duck is named Mulva. If you don’t know where we got that name, shame of you! She’s the runt of the litter - much smaller than the other Khaki Campbells. She’s also much more skittish.

Here’s a pic of Arp and M with Macaroni. Macaroni is the most tame of the ducks, and the one that takes the most initiative in coming forward to investigate whenever we come in to visit. I think she might also be the alpha duck.

Next post: How we got rid of the chickens….

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 at 1:13 pm and is filed under raising ducks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.