Today at High Meadows

Well, you wouldn't know it from this - but there is actually a pond for ducks at the edge of the yard in the woods....yet they seem to like being around the chickens and us, too. Mama is the one splashing in the tub...Papa is the brown and white one on guard. It is interesting - we started with a flock of 10 - they dwindled over the summer (there was a fox around for a while) to just these 3. Both females take time on the nest, they both sit at night and the mama gets a turn off her sitting duty a couple times a day. They have laid probably 5 nests - so many would get up to 7 or 8 eggs, and then something would eate every egg in one night. The girls would find another spot, again and again...til finally, they began REALLY sitting on this nest of 7 eggs. In the beginning of this nesting, the ducks would lay an egg, and then visit the nest several hours a day to check and turn the eggs. They would return to the pond or coop at night, after carefully covering the eggs with hay and grass. After witnessing their first several failed attempts, and knowing we had oppossum and skunks around, we decided to collect the eggs when the ducks went in for the evening, and put them back in the morning before the mama's came back to lay again. In this way, we collected 10 fertile eggs that we planned on incubating, and the ducks ended up with 7 to sit on. Well, of our 10, there are 9 that are growing and viable...and the mama ducks have ended up with 2 shiny, hard big beautiful eggs that we hope will hatch for them. (the other 5 were discarded by the mama's over the past 2 weeks) With a little (ok, a lot of) luck, we think the incubated eggs will hatch within a day or so of the other 2, so maybe we will be able to give the duckings to a mama!