Posts in category: Ducks

Whitey is doing much better, and I’m not so concerned.  He/she is about as active as the others, gets in the pool and enjoys it, and seems just fine.  His/her color is getting lighter, more of a creamy yellow.  I kind of hope Whitey turns out to be a female, so we can keep her for laying.  If not, we’ll have a nice, plump roast duck to compare with the others for eating. 

The little ones are enjoying their new routine, coming out in the morning to meet the day.  Here’s a video of them coming out of their house.

I’m a little concerned about Whitey, the White Appleyard.  He (she?) seems a little more lethargic than the others, and sits a lot, even while eating and drinking.  He’s got an odd reddish spot alongside his neck that particularly shows up when he’s wet, he just seems a bit odd. 

I wonder if he’s growing too fast, and if we’ve given the ducks too much protein.  According to the book, we should be dropping the protein content about now anyway, so I’ll mix some lower protein ingredients into their food to drop down the protein percentage.  We got some organic “hen scratch” at 8% protein, so hopefully that will help, along with a little more oatmeal.  I’ve also been adding some water or whey to their food, as suggested, with my kitchen pastry blender.  It makes a nice, moist, crumbly consistency, and I’ve noticed they don’t run to their waterer quite as quickly or frequently now while eating.  I should have done this from the start—that food seemed awfully dry!

The ducks moved out to their own house today, at two weeks old!  This morning one of them managed to escape the brooder box in the basement, so we decided to hurry up and get their own house completed enough for them to move in.  Tim took a break from work, and I helped, too.  Tim made another frame with hardware cloth on it, so added to the first frame (which was in the brooder) we’ve more than doubled their living space inside.  It’ll be a lot cuter when it’s done and painted, but for now it’s functional–it’s even insulated!  We put the heat lamps out there, since it’s still pretty cool at night.  We got this nifty door at a recycle place: it has interchangeable glass panes or screen door, so we can close ’em up and night or when it’s cold, and let them have more ventilation during the day.

In addition to finishing the inside of the duck house, we put up some temporary fencing to make a pen for them outside the house.  It is so warm now in the daytime, we feel they can spend a fair amount of time outside.  The pool is there, but blocked off so that they can only enter when we are present.  It’s been much cooler since that first day we put them into the pool, so they haven’t been in it since.  When it warms up, we’ll let them go in again, with supervision.

Here’s a video showing them outside by their house.

We’re building “Duck Inn”, the duck house.  The plan is detailed here in Tim’s videos: