Time to finally post about our ducklings.

As you may remember, quite a few weeks ago (I’m thinking 6?) a raccoon had gotten into our chicken/duck yard and killed one half of our mating duck couple. Cocoa, our female.

This left Shivers, our male, without a mate. As is typical with male animals, he became lonely and decided to remedy the situation, and mate with one of our two Muscovy female ducks instead.

While this wasn’t ideal, I did some research and found out the two breeds are ‘ok’ to intermix. Our only other option was to get rid of Shivers, and seeing as he is Shaylah’s pet, that wasn’t really an option.

When our Muscovy became EXTREMELY broody, the kids became very excited. At first I was hesitant to leave her eggs, but then I agreed we’d allow her to keep four. We had never hatched eggs ourselves, and the kids were SO excited to be a part of the process.

I mean SO excited. If you doubt HOW excited, you can watch/listen, but before I give you the link, I’m warning you. TURN DOWN YOUR SOUND! Squeals of all sorts will be heard. My girls are NOT quiet when excited. Ha!

http://youtu.be/lQU8VCytPc4

If you didn’t turn down your sound, don’t you wish now, that you had?

First to be hatched was this little one, who the girls have named BamBam
(although I’m hoping BamBam is actually a GIRL, we can’t have more boys!)

Then came Pebbles, who we were concerned wasn’t going to make it.

She didn’t seem as strong as BamBam at birth, but within a day, she showed us she was going to be fine.

If Pebbles ends up being a boy, I will be very surprised. She’s just like Cocoa when she was a duckling!

The other two eggs turned out to be duds. When candled, you couldn’t see any heart beat/pulsation. We got rid of them so Daphne (mom) would concentrate on caring for her now hatched ducklings.

I think the girls like their new ducks.

Would you agree?