This week I took all of the hatchlings down to the Jensen petting zoo so they could watch them for me while I re-arrange the duck pen. DuckSoup and his compatriate Stevie(the wonderduck) did not survive their second day. Not sure what happened, they were the smallest of the bunch. Could be they got trampled by the others or something else equally obscure.
It is kind of sad, but that is life on the farm. Sometimes the smaller, weaker, less fit just don’t make it. I brought two older ducks home from choir Thursday night and placed them in the pool with the others on Friday. These are from eggs I gave to a friend and they were hatched out April 25th, which makes them three weeks old. The difference in size between them and my new ones is quite apparent. It won’t take long for the new ones to catch up though.
I have been busy this week trying to catch up with the weather and the outside chores. I managed to mow the yard once, cleaned the chicken house, haven’t cleared the irrigation ditch yet, but I did get started on building fence to enclose the duck yard. Like I have stated before, it would be too messy to have 15 (or more) ducks freely roaming the property.
Well, here are the egg stats for the week of 5/11/2014 thru 5/17/2014
- Eggs collected: chickens – 59, ducks – 14
- Sold: chickens – 1 dozen, ducks – 1 dozen (payment was 2 live ducks)
- Cartons filled: chickens – 5, ducks – 1