Ducklings Think They’re Chickens

Here are the emergency replacement ducklings that I hatched in our incubator mid-November. Still working on their adult feathers, but they are wooly from the winter temperatures! Their feather down grew in much faster and thicker than summer ducklings, for sure. I generally move baby poultry out of the house after a week. Any longer than that, and baby ducks can really stink up a room!

So, these fellas were outside in the “screen porch” A-frame during the bitter teen temperatures we had a few weeks ago. Animals never cease to amaze me at how hardy they are to what we consider uncomfortable climate conditions. I might have worried about them. But, though they had a heat lamp to keep them warm, they chose to sleep as far away from it as possible, out in the open screen part of the A-frame. So, evidently, they didn’t think it was too chilly!

Usually at about this age, I can start integrating ducklings into the adult duck flock-they are large enough to not take too much harassment while a new pecking order is established. But, strangely, this time with my girl-only flock of adult ducks, these babies have had a harder time. The adult hens chase and pinch and bully them. On the contrary, the chickens, who stay closer to where the baby ducks A-frame sits, were indifferent to them from the start. I started letting the baby ducks run loose when they were about three weeks old, watching the new rooster closely to see if he’d give them grief. But, he didn’t.

So, I guess it’s no surprise that at some point, the ducklings decided to move in with the chickens at night, rather than sleep in their own A-frame! I don’t find that domestic poultry have the same imprinting characteristics that wild fowl do, but indeed these ducks seem to  have bonded with the chickens from being around them more. It works ok, the chickens all sit on their roosts at night, leaving some floor space for the ducklings. And in the morning when they’re anxious to be let out, they all jostle together at the door, oblivious to the inter-species integration that’s going on in there.

I’ll be curious to see what happens when the baby boy ducks mature, if they’ll warm up to their own kind when love is in the air?

 

Christmas Chicks

I had put a batch of chicken eggs into our Little Giant foam incubator, mostly as an experiment to see if chickens would render a higher yield than ducks do in that incubator. And, indeed they do!

 

New Roo

Out of the 21 Rhode Island Red hatchery pullets I bought last spring, I was hoping one might turn out to be a mistaken rooster. And these ladies are so assertive that more than once I thought I did have a rooster, with the way they spar, and mount each other! But, I finally decided it wasn’t the case- I have sixteen hens left, and no sire amongst them. So, I have been on a quest for a RIR roo!

 

What I Learned At Summer Camp

Well, not summer camp exactly. But I just got back from a four-day trip to Corvallis, OR to attend the Katahdin Hair Sheep International Expo and Sale. I really enjoyed it, they had great farm tours, speakers, and a sheep sale. I bought a few sheep too! I’ll try to write about the highlights, as best as I can capture all that I absorbed there.

 

More Little Chicken Eggs

My parents animal-sat while we were on vacation. I didn’t ask them to hunt for eggs in the yard, of course, and had almost forgotten about the two tiny chicken eggs we’d found the week before. But, yesterday the distinctive “bu-KAWK! buck-buck-buck bu-KAWK!” sound of a chicken complaining while laying eggs made me look behind the crawlspace entrance, from where the sound was emanating. There were eleven, still tiny, brown eggs collected there.