I made a very interesting discovery this weekend:  I do not, in fact, have 4 Welsummer girls.  I have 2 girls and 2 boys!  Ain’t that the way the cookie crumbles…

I noticed last week that one of the Wellies seemed to have a very prominent comb so I started watching them a bit more.  I noticed that two of them did a lot of “play fighting” while the other two would perch quietly and watch the activity in the barnyard.  Then I was taking some photos and noticed that the coloring and tailfeathers were different.  The girls are very light colored at this point and the boys have black feathers jutting out of their backside.  Now when I look at them I can’t see how I missed it to begin with!  The difference in their combs is pretty clear.

They're all still pretty tiny right now and these traits only just started to show.  But next time I raise Welsummers I'll probably see the signs much sooner.

Well, I really don’t think it’s prudent to have 3 roosters running around when I only have 9 hens…unfortunately, in these days of  urban chickens, most folks aren’t looking for a roo around their house because they tend to be a little on the noisy side.  Personally, I enjoy the sound of a rooster crowing but I've discovered that I'm an anomaly.  Because it would appear thaton that my immediate neighbors do not.  Hopefully someone will want to take these pretty boys home; otherwise they’ll have to go to freezer camp with the extra drakes I haven’t been able to send to new families.

Of course, looking at them now it's so obvious... live and learn.

Seems the raptor has found a chink in my armor.  One of my big Muscovy boys was attacked today but he must've fought back pretty hard.  Of course, he weighs about 12 pounds so the hawk (at less than 4 lbs) was certainly out-sized.  Before my duck got away he lost a lot of feathers on the back of his neck, had a tiny wound near his wing and a big "bite" of meat near his chest.  I only really noticed because he looked kind of dirty and these guys keep their white feathers pretty clean.  But the other ducks were sort of pecking at him so I knew something was wrong.  This is the male I planned to keep for my breeding flock so I really need him to be healthy!

I wrangled him up, brought him into the house (under protest) and settled him into the sink for a good cleaning.  He seemed to like to cold water from the sprayer on this hot, hot day, but was significantly less happy about the vinegar I poured over his feathers and wounds.  I got him cleaned up, some Bactine on his owies and set him up in a temporary "sick bay".  OK, I know it's not fancy (it's pretty ugly) since it's all built from leftover parts of other projects.  But it's sturdy and predator proof.

I took Buffy's old broody box and a large wire dog kennel pushed against the open gate to expand the outdoor area and got him set up in there so he could heal up without the others picking on him.  He really started to freak out when the rest of the Muscovy lined up and headed into the barn for bedtime.  So I grabbed one of the small Muscovy girls and put her in there with him.  He calmed down immediately and she didn't seem to mind; plus she wasn't pecking at him.  These birds are extremely social and are always touching each other so I knew it would be too hard on him to leave him all alone.  Once it was full dark I saw that the two of them had gone inside to the nest portion of the broody box... that's a good sign.  I guess in the morning I'll take her out when I treat his wounds again.

A guy on one of my homesteading forums uses honey on his ducks wounds and says they heal up really nice.  My only problem is I can't wrap a bandage on him by myself.  He's a big boy and I need both hands to hold him so I might have to call in reinforcements - who?  I really, really dunno.  Lordy, I need a second pair of hands... Bobby!  Hey, little bro... I'll throw it out one more time, dude.

UPDATE: I kept this Muscovy boy in sickbay for 2 days and checked on his wound twice a day.  I used a lot of neosporin on it and he seems to have recovered fine so I let him back out with the rest of the gang.  This is great news!

This was a very stressful week here at Moose Manor.  I had an awful predator problem and lost 7 ducks in 3 days!  I figured that it was a bird of prey, likely a hawk, and though many of my sources said that the signs didn’t point to a raptor issue I pursued that line of prevention anyway.  It got worse as time progressed and I lost 4 ducks in one day.  I won’t go into great detail about the injuries but many of those sweet little birds were not killed by the predator, they were instead left terribly maimed and traumatized, still capable of walking but totally beyond medical attention.  I did the right thing by all of them, which was incredibly emotionally taxing for me and I’m still sad.  Especially since I lost both of my juvenile Khaki Campbell girls in one day – they were my little incubator babies and my favorites.  Little Hardee Campbell and Messie Campbell are gone now and poor, sweet Hardee hung in there until I got home that evening.  I cried and cried when I saw her but knew what I had to do.  The KC drake, Splashie Campbell, just seemed so lost without the girls as he wandered back and forth in the enclosure with the Harlequin.  

I couldn’t keep them all locked in their barns with 100 degree heat so I only gave them a relatively small outdoor area and, other than stretching bird netting over an acre of woods, I tried every trick and crazy suggestion in the book over the several days my ducks were being attacked - most of the “tried and true” methods were completely ineffective.  The one thing that worked was creating a giant web of 20lb test fishing line about 7 feet above the ground over their enclosures and play areas.  I wish I had found this solution the first day!  The night after I put a section of web up I came home feeling very anxious… it worked!!  Over the next few days I spent hours stringing webs of fishing line over the back acre of my property so the ducks could safely free-range.  This has been tremendously effective.

On a happy note, over the last few days little Splash has found his place with the Harlequin.  They’ve finally accepted him as one of their own and a few times this weekend I saw him “leading the pack” as they waddled across the barnyard, which made me smile for him.  All the ducks are enjoying their freedom and with the high heat index I put out several small pools for them to splash in and they seem to be having a rompin’ good time.

The chickens, baby chicks, and baby ducks were unaffected by the hawk.  Apparently, this raptor had her mind set on grown duck for dinner so – thankfully – I had no losses in that area.  In fact, the baby ducks are growing by leaps and bounds!  They’re mostly feathered out and the girls have found their quackers.  No little budgie sounds from their play pen anymore…they’re a pretty noisy bunch these days – LOL!  

They have 2 litter pan pools and a bigger 36-inch tub to splash around in.  They just love the water so much I can’t imagine depriving them of a proper pond!  There are two little Khaki Campbell ducklings in this bunch and they had me cracking up this weekend.  I sit out there and have a beer with them most evenings after my chores are done and all 13 of them were trying to cram themselves into the 2 litter pans then they would all run over to the bigger tub and jump in there for a while, then back to the pans.  They’re just making this huge mess, chasing each other back and forth, flapping their wings and quack-quack-quacking… basically having a ball.  I noticed these baby Campbell’s just seemed so extra excited about their little game and one of the girls was dipping her head into the water, splashing it all over, then loudly stamping her feet in the puddle she was making.  It was just so funny!  She would make this excited little qUAck, then DipSplash, DribbleDribble, then do this little dance… SplatSpatSplat! Made me think of a kid in his little gumboots… too cute!

It was miserably hot this weekend and in the middle of the day the geese would hog up a whole litter pan just sitting in it to cool off.  I was jealous that I didn’t have a tub of water to sit in myself!   And up until this weekend the Harlequin only thought of me as the crazy lady who stuffed them into a big dog kennel and drove them across town in a hot car.  When I was in their line of sight they boogied it on out of the area.  But over the last few days we’ve become very good friends.  They heard me filling one of the kiddie pools this weekend and ran right over to see what that wonderful noise was.  They stood off at a “safe” distance panting in the heat and watching me fill the pool with cold water and while I chatted away they inched closer and closer.  I turned the hose sprayer to mist and aimed it at them and they were just in heaven!  They came right up to within about a foot of me and the boys aimed their big chests into the spray while the girls tried to catch the bigger drops with their beaks.  Now any time I turn on the hose they run over and want to be showered!  I guess I’m no longer the crazy lady because now they tend to congregate wherever I’m hanging out in the yard.  They probably don't want to miss an opportunity to get a cool dousing!

This last is completely unrelated to ducks: if you enjoy reading about my farm please check out this gals blog.  She and I have a lot in common and her posts usually make me laugh which was a much needed antidote for last week!

  It looks like Buffy had Independence Day on her mind when she decided that it was time that her 4 baby Welsummers needed to learn to fend for themselves.

For the first couple of days they would tag along with Buffy for food, but she no longer makes that clucking noise letting them know where to find the food.  Buff wants to hunt for bugs with the other hens or eats her own food just for herself instead making sure the Wellie babies get their share first.  By the middle of the week the babies got the message and now fend for themselves at the feeder and forage for themselves when they're free-ranging; so now they've formed their own little 4-girl flock.  

Before Buff "pushed them out of the nest", when I would lock them up at night the babies would be under the cover of Buffy's wings away from the other hens on a far roost.  But now Buff has taken up her old place and sleeps with the other layers and the little Wellie girls are still on the far roost but sleeping bunched up together without a mamma hen.  And now there is that familiar pinkish brown egg to make up 7 eggs in the nest box again every day :)

They seem to have taken to it well, but like all teenagers they like to stay up late doing Lord-knows-what and forget to get into the henhouse with the rest of the girls when it's dark.  One morning when I went to unlock the henhouse I saw 3 of the 4 fly out of the holly tree in the henyard!  They must've been out hunting bugs late because I didn't lock everyone up until about 9 pm (the hens usually hit the roost by 8 - but those ducks like to stay out late).

My little Welsummer cockerel (see him at the bottom of this page) decided a few weeks ago that he absolutely was NOT sleeping in the henhouse and would rather roost up in the holly tree - no amount of convincing was getting him to change his mind either.  But I guess those baby Welsummer girls figured they'd roost with him for the night since they'd missed curfew.  He's a scrapper already by the way he bosses those big ducks (the Chickens boss him terribly so I guess he's lashing out) and I reckon they were as safe as they could have been outside of their house.  I still tsk'd at them and told them that if that foolish young cockerel didn't have enough sense to be in the safety of the henhouse they sure didn't have to follow his example by making themselves owl food too!  Now I do a flashlight headcount when I lock up the doors at night.  I haven't had any more trouble so far. :)
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