Concerned about the little one & cherries!!

One of our little ducks doesn't seem to be growing as quickly as the others. We believe that it is a female since she doesn't have the yellow markings on her head (we assume the markings mean male...we could be wrong). Anyway, yesterday, I was headed to let the ducks out. I frequently count the babies (who aren't babies anymore!) to make sure no one got away. I counted 5. Where was the other? She was sitting in the box with the Mamma (who's sitting on eggs). I let the ducks out and all left, including the Mamma, except for our little one. She did end up coming out and wandering around. When it came time for us to leave the house, we chased the ducks back into their pen, but I only counted 5. The little one was sitting under the slide of the swing set (in the shade). I only figured out where because of the loud peeping. She is much easier to catch than the others.
One of her eyes looks kinda funny. Since we are certainly not duck experts, we are really not sure what to think of it. She certainly is slower and smaller. At the moment, we have her separated from the rest to take a break, but I don't think we'll leave it that way. Not sure about duckie depression, but I would guess that it happens and isn't healthy (like humans.).
Some websites suggest getting "toys" for the duckies to play with...um...haven't done that yet.

OH! OH! Who needs TV when you have live entertainment in the backyard?!! We ate fruit for dinner tonight and had a few cherries and apple wedges left over. Not enough to bother saving so I took them out to our "pond pals." I said, "I've got apples and cherries. If you want 'em, you gotta come and get 'em." And I knelt down outside of the pen and held out the fruit in my hand. Three of the young ducks (gotta stop calling them babies, cause they are too big to be babies!) were very interested. They ate those cherries right of the ends of my fingers. Actually, they mostly just grabbed them, dropped them, and the nice Mamma duck would eat them. The little guys ate quite a bit, but she was always there to catch what didn't make it "down the hatch."
Daffy, our drake...not to bright. Of course he wouldn't come near us (Bill got to share the joy), but we'd try to be nice and throw them toward him. He'd back away, scared. Then the babies, er...young ducks...would gobble them up. Sigh. When he did get one once, he was just too slow, dropped it and the others ate it up. Oh well. We tried to be nice to him...even though he's a meanie.

A note about feeding duckies from your hand...try to convince them to nibble the FOOD from your HAND, not nibble your FINGERS as FOOD!!! It doesn't HURT at the first little slip. Kinda feels funny. But the start chomping down harder the more times they end up nipping your finger instead of a cherry!!! Still not incredible painful, but certainly not pleasant.

Current Duckie Status

It's been an interesting few days. We were up to ten ducks. Then down to 9. Then we lost another one. :-( Perhaps being passed around to various kids that afternoon did him in. Or perhaps he was one of our incubator ducks...that didn't quite make it. We don't know, but it was quite sad. :-(
So then we were back down to 8 again. And those 8 sure are growing!!!! They are getting so big. Well, another day, not too long ago (can't remember exact days at the moment), one of our "inside eggs" hatched! Yippee. He was so sweet! I tried to take him out to the big ducks but he wanted to crawl around on my hands, arms, legs, lap, etc. Very sweet. It broke my heart to put him back with the other ducks. I wish we hadn't. He didn't make it. They got him. Looks like the bigger ducks did him in. :-( Very sad. I don't like those big ducks picking on my babies!!!

SO - new approach! After those 8 have been doing quite well, it looks like the mamma ducks really don't care about the rest of their eggs. They aren't sitting on them as much, so we took them in. ONE ALREADY HATCHED!! That was fast! Typically, we hear the squeaking egg and the next day, a duckie arrives. Well this one only took an hour or two to push on through that shell.
We are NOT putting him out with the other ducks!! No way. We found a website that has some duckling tips, so we are going to try to keep him inside with us. :-) We've still got a bunch of eggs in the incubator, so we may still get a few more inside ducks. Of course we aren't going to let them roam the house or anything! Hopefully, our inside babies will last better with us. We don't have a very good track record at this point. Keeping our fingers crossed!

Baby Duckies

We have some new arrivals to announce! Day before yesterday, we found two broken eggshells at the edges of the duck cage. We didn't see any baby ducks, so it was quite mysterious and we wondered if perhaps the mama ducks had "disposed" of these eggs since they were no good. We were sure what to make of it.
Yesterday, we discovered two cute little ducklings!! We have Neleh to thank for the duckling spotting. Bekah (her newly adopted spelling) and I were doing school on the porch when Neleh told us. I wasn't quite ready to belive her, but she was right!! They are so cute. I took pictures. Once I learn more about this blogging stuff, perhaps I'll post the pictures.

Well, on May 6, Bill had decided that he had waited long enough for baby ducks and was taking matters into his own hands. He collected 8 duck eggs and brought them inside to the incubator. In response to a suggestion from our neighbor, Has Hall, we marked the shells of the other eggs with the date, 5/6. This would help us to know if any new eggs were laid.

This afternoon, Bill went to the incubator to "turn the eggs." One of the eggs had hatched!! There was a freshly hatched cutie in our basement! He was still wet and everything. We carefully put him on a paper plate and carried him out to the duck pen. Sadly, the mother ducks are not really accepting him. :-( He's so cute though. They are snubbing him quite a bit. You'd think that they'd have taken him in so easily, but no. The other two ducklings are nestled in the back of the box, and our little guy is stuck on the outside. He was trying to nudge his way in between the mamas earlier without much luck.

A ha! I may have discovered my purpose for blogging. A diary of duckies.