Buffy has been very serious about raising up her babies.  She stayed in the interior nest area of the broodie-box for the entire first week.  Finally I saw her come out into the tiny attached outdoor area but if you got too close to the box she'd round 'em up and head back inside.  But at least everyone was getting some fresh air.

I opened the front gate of the box today and just let her decide if she was ready to venture out into the henyard with the babies yet.  She must be going stir crazy being cooped up in that nest for a month!  Well, she was very cautious but finally brought them out into the 30 x 30 enclosure that surrounds the henhouse.  I had already let the other girls out onto the property to free-range so she had the whole space all to herself.  It was nice to see her out laying in the sun with the babies all around her, some snuggled up into her fluffy feathers.

 
I ordered 21 Cornish Roasters from Meyer Hatchery in Polk, OH and 24 just arrived in the mail.  I wasn't expecting them until Friday and when Darleen down at the Pomfret Post Office called me I could hear them peeping up a storm in the background so I had to leave work half-way through the day to pick them up and get them home for something to drink.

Everyone seems to be doing well, a couple look woosy from the trip so I made certain they each got a drink of sugar water before moving them to the brooder box and putting in some food for them.  So far so good!

The ducklings are very active and getting up to all sorts of hijinx :)  They're keeping me very busy but it's a lot of fun to watch them run around and be silly. 

The Khaki Campbell's are considerably more high strung than the Muscovy.  But that's not a stretch since I think that those Muscovy ducks are just about the calmest baby animal I've ever encountered! 

The different ducks and the baby chicks all live separately since it would be unsafe for 3 little ducklings to live with 15 giant ducklings, and ducks are too wet and sloppy for good chicken health.  But this weekend I put the KC's outside in an enclosure so they could get used to being outdoors and give them some fresh air but they just wouldn't come out of their shelter.  So I picked out my two smallest and sweetest Muscovy girls to school the KC's in the zen of calm.  It worked like a charm!  Soon they were all splashing around and talking to each other, then later I saw they'd all snuggled up together.  A couple of days ago I tried putting all the Muscovy outside together but I had to carry them in batches of 5 and the more of them that disappeared from the others the more terrified the remaining group became.  So I decided that it was just too stressful for them.  Next weekend they should have enough feathers to safely move into their permanent outdoor duck enclosure and maybe a week or so later they can start running free all over the yard.

Moose-dog Cooper must have missed her calling as a mom... she has certainly taken on the responsibility for watching over the ducks and gets very concerned when I do something that gets them all in a peeping panic - like carry them outside.  At night I have the mooses sleep in the barn just to make sure I provide no opportunities to predators and now when I open the barn door in the morning I find the Muscovy out of their brooder and sleeping on the bed with the dogs!  Guess that was a good idea too since it's important that they form a strong relationship :)

Buffy went broody on me and was fully committed to hatching this crazy purple plastic egg I had put in some unused nest boxes to encourage the girls to lay there.  I don't have a rooster so I got on ebay (gosh, you can buy anything there!) and ordered her some fertilized Welsummer eggs to set.  I built a broody box with her own extra large nest box and tiny outdoor run while she doted on her new eggs and 20 days later she had 5 babies!  She likes having her own private space and I'll like it when she gets off the nest long enough so I can clean it out.

The Welsummer's can be sight-sexed at birth - female's have a distictive triangle on top of their head and clear eyeliner, on the males all these marks are very fuzzy - each of Buffy's babies have well defined, sharp markings so I think I just got 5 more hens!  Yay... what luck!

I've been incubating these little duck eggs for 28 days waiting eagerly for the hatch... well, they were 4 days late but here they are!

Only 3 made it out but they're running around looking happy and healthy.  Still a little unsteady on their new legs but they are flourishing and have already grown quite a bit... or at least got fluffier :)

Read all about Khaki Campbell ducks here.