The “baby” ducklings are now 9 weeks old, and all grown up!
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| Nine Weeks Old |
We just have the six ducks now. We gave away the two remaining Golden Cascades. It just seemed easier to deal with feeding and caring for the six young’uns. When we took the six-pack out to the big pen with the big ducks, we had a partition up the middle of both the house and the pen, to keep them separate. Besides requiring different feed, we weren’t sure how the bigger ducks would treat the smaller ones. When we did put them together in the same yard one afternoon, they basically avoided each other. It probably wouldn’t have been a problem, but we really didn’t want to keep 8 ducks–6 will be plenty.
They now happily enjoy going outside of the pen to forage, and have learned to make quite a racket when feeding time comes. Blackie is definitely the quackiest. According to information I had read, I thought that the Cayuga ducks (Blackie) were supposed to be quite calm, but not this one! Whitey is beautiful and the most photogenic. Harley and Quinn, the Welsh Harlequins, are quite calm and steady–if I look closely, I can tell them apart. The runners, Cocoa and Fawn, are cute–I expected them to be taller, but perhaps they haven’t finished growing. It’s nice having different colors, shapes and sizes, after previously getting ducks of the same breed.
In the past we have added lighting to the duck house in an attempt to get them to lay eggs as early as possible, but this time we don’t plan to add the lighting: we will let nature take its course and take the eggs when we get them. I expect to see eggs sometime around February, when the ducks are fully mature, spring is coming and they’re ready to lay.