Happy ducks
The little ducklings are now a bit more than 6 weeks old, and already they look like plain old full-grown ducks!
I’ve finished fencing their pen in the swampiest, muckiest quadrant of the garden…. just in time for us to begin experiencing an early drought. Sorry, ducks, only tiny ponds for you. (I’m trying to figure out how to fence in the slightly bigger pond outside the garden fence so they can actually swim… but property lines, groundhogs, blah blah complicated. It’ll be a while.)
They are so cute, and pretty smart, and they still give us ducky kisses. I like them so much better than chickens, mainly because they are way smarter: they recognize me (they react totally differently – warily – when they see someone else), remember routines, and even follow me around if I walk outside the fence. They’ll eat out of my hand if I crouch inside the coop with them.
Unfortunately, they are also males. All but one, the white one. So much for my hopes of 3 hens to 2 drakes so I’d only have to off one of them. I’m pretty sad about it, but anyone who knows anything about male ducks know that even a one-to-one ratio is definitely not so good for the female. With that in mind I have a friend bringing me another hen in July sometime, and until they reach sexual maturity I can just enjoy them and let them live a great life.
So in a few months, three boys will have one bad day. But in the mean time, they have an enormous pen with clover halfway to my knees, grass to my waist, two little ponds and a zillion bugs. They are just the happiest ducks and so much fun.