Posts Tagged duckling

I got home from work tonight and went to check on ‘the lonely duckling’ to find to my horror he was gone! The signs of a duckling thief were clear…. Corn had been added to his duck crumbs, a doll had been left on his straw and a little dolls blanket and milk bottle were all at the scene of the crime. I concluded very quickly that a child had somehow managed to get into the garage, climb up to his box to steal the lonely duckling.

After a frantic search around the garage, I went down to the house in the hope that my daughter Katy might just have an idea of what might have happened but I discovered that she had asked to go to bed early because she was tired and my other daughter had wanted to sleep in her bedroom to keep her company….. Earlier on in the day, my wife had made a comment on the phone about how sweet it was that she had placed a tray under her bed with duck crumbs and water on it for her dollies…

Hmmm the pieces of the jigsaw went together in my head and I went up to Katy’s bedroom to find the lonely duckling under the duvet, cuddled up to my daughter. “But I want to look after the lonely duckling tonight” she sobbed…

I couldn’t bare to see the duckling on its own but I couldn’t kill it and now I couldn’t bare to hear the desperate cheep it made and Katy’s sobbing as I took the duckling from her…. So the lonely duckling had a new home for the night. Not in her bed as he would probably end up squashed but in a little box next to the bed.

I am going soft in my (old?) age.

Well, the plan was good, to incubate 20 duck eggs, hatch some more ducklings and continue improving my stock. I thought I could maybe even enter the British Waterfowl National Show in November this year if I had any real ‘good lookers’ but as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry…

The first problem I had was after candling the eggs. I found 18 out of 20 were infertile. Why? I don’t know. The last batch of 12 were all fertile, the drake seemed healthy and was certainly happy. As I had candled these eggs quite late into the incubation period, the two remaining eggs were well developed and looked promising so I decided to try to at least hatch 2 but then days before the hatch, I could see very little further development in one of the two eggs and I was left with only one viable egg.

Is it fair to hatch just one duckling? I have always tried to ensure my animals are happy and part of that involves providing company for them with more of their own species, but here I was faced with a decision – could I kill one very viable, healthy duckling that was about to face the incredible challenge of breaking out of his shell? Or should I let him hatch and see him cheep as he sits their looking for a mother or the company of other ducklings? I manage to kill young cockerels, chicks even that I know are cockerels to save the hardship of growing them, getting to know them and then having to do the dirty deed but could I kill this little duckling? No I couldn’t.

So last weekend, the shell pipped and 12 hours later, out popped a very exhausted little duckling who has now adopted the name of ‘The Lonely Duckling’. He (or she) is a very sweet little thing that the children adore (Why this duckling when we regularly hatch them, I don’t know).

The story of this lonely duckling will continue. For now, he has a little teddy bear to cuddle up to and gets lots of fuss from us, his new found family. Our plan for this little one is to pop him in with our other, older ducklings as soon as he is big enough but this will be 4 or 5 weeks away at least. Until then, he is slowly becoming more and more tame, more tame than any of our other ducklings have ever been.

If you want to see the lonely duckling, he is on the poultrykeeper lonely duckling webcam of course! That is if you aren’t reading this long after the event…