Here’s an orphaned duckling, which I suspect fell out of Honey’s nest this morning (I peeked, and there are many broken eggshells, but she’s sitting on her babies). It swam around the pond peeping piteously, until a member of Team Duck and I rescued it. (We tried to put it into Dorothy’s brood, but she wasn’t having it, and attacked it several times: after only three days, the size difference is clear.) It is in my office, dried off with tissues and warming up by a heater. You may recall that one of Honey’s brood fell from the nest last year the night before they all jumped, and I had to take it home and integrate it with her brood the next day. This baby, however, is stressed and needs to recover.
Wish me luck. I will either rehab it or, if it recovers from its stress by tomorrow, try to integrate it into Honey’s brood, which is likely to jump down to the pond tomorrow morning.
Duck Farming is no picnic.
UPDATE: I’m not sure this little guy is going to make it.
Well done! You are a Duckfather like no other 👍
Duck daddy of the year award to you.
Will you eat it?
Jesus, what a question. I suspect Jerry would as lief eat a census-taker’s liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti as one of his ducks’ ducklings.
Well, he does refer to it as farming, so I suppose it’s an understandable question… 😉
I mean… this is verbatim from today’s Hili dialogue:
“I was in the mood for a big, good wine because it was a long, hard day on the duck pond. I will have this with chicken breast, rice, and green beans.”
Fowl is fair and fair is fowl?
Whilst Jerry has eaten duck in the past, I can’t imagine he would ever knowingly eat one of Honey’s offspring.
Although it’s true as Robert points out that he does refer to it as “duck farming”.
Some fowl is on the bill of fare, some ain’t, I suppose.
Please get off my website, and don’t return. What a jerky thing to ask!
+
Yikes, poor little thing! I hope it can be reunited with Honey and its siblings. And best wishes to our host and Team Duck for the doubtless stressful weeks to come.
+1
Yes, the stress. But each year process gets smoother, as protocols in place to act quickly, if intervention needed.
Do you feed it? And if so, what?
I was watching the pond cam for at least the last of the excitement. I thought one of you two might have to go in the water.
I hope you are able to reunite the duckling with mom.
BTW surely every duck farmer needs a d*g. A mix between a Border Collie and a Labrador Retriever perhaps.
I can’t get over how cute they are at this stage of their development. Hang in, there, Jerry. It looks like you’re going to have a lot of ducklings this year!
I am hoping for the best for this little one, as well as the rest of the two broods. I am always amazed that so many make it to adulthood, given how tiny they are and how many dangers they face. Botany Pond is a great place to be a duck mom.
I don’t like bad news. 🙁
Me either.