My chicks were shipped from Missouri on Wednesday, May 11th.
I got a call from the post office around 9:00am that my chicks and ducklings were in! I had hoped they would be delivered on Friday. I explained that no one would be home during the day, but that I would come pick them up after work and before close at 4:30.
They came in quite a small box for my having ordered 21 total baby birds: 15 Buff Orpington pullets and 6 Rouen unsexed ducklings. I had anticipated that I might lose some in transit: Missouri to Northern Pennsylvania is a long trip for anyone, let alone a day-old chick. When we opened the box we saw that we had indeed lost one duckling. Everybody else was alert and very chirpy, so we proceeded to get the chicks settled.
I had built 2 brooders -- one for each species -- loosely following the directions found here -- the weekend prior. Well, I had built one brooder and it was so quick and easy that MrCoven cut the lid out to build the other while I got the ducks and chicks settled. "Settling" them consisted of lining the bottom of the plastic bin with newspapers (yet another use of what's left of my 30 copies of November 11, 2010's New York Times), filling up the water bottles with body-temperature water, filling the feeders with food, and then putting the chicks one by one into the brooder. I had hung the lamp a few days prior, and I only needed to adjust it after I saw the chicks acting like it was too hot for them in there. I put all 21 babies in the one complete brooder while we assembled the second and hung the light.
The ducklings and chicks seem to get along pretty well together by and large, and I hear that once they are full grown, they can share living quarters. The danger now in keeping them together is twofold: ducks are messy and can give diseases to the chicks, and the ducks put on weight more quickly and can inadvertently hurt a significantly smaller chick. One of the ducks was acting quite aggressively towards a few chicks, seeming to chase them down and butt them with its beak, but as soon as we separated the two species, the angry duckling disappeared and 5 hungry ducklings were all that remained. I'm sure being cooped up in a cardboard box, in the dark, with weird noises and 20 other creatures would make me cranky too.
I was not expecting there to be as huge a difference between the two species as there clearly is: I was assuming that baby birds were basically baby birds. Not the case.
Chicks are really, really, extremely stupid. The first thing we did was dunk the chicks' heads under water until they had to gulp, to teach them how to drink water and where their water is. We did that for all 16 chicks -- that's right, 16 chicks! I guess you get a kind of farmers' dozen when you order them, maybe in case one of the girls turns out to be a boy. Anyway, they drank a lot of water right away -- maybe close to a pint between them.
Chicks are also too stupid to know what is food and what is, say, bedding. It became immediately apparent that the pine shavings would have to wait, since several chicks tried to eat them. I scooped the chicks out, scooped out the handful of shavings, and moved on to actually feeding them. To do that, I threw a handful of non-medicated poulty starter on top of the newspapers, and they proceeded to eat both the feed and any poop that had started to accumulate. Whatever floats your boat, stupid chicks. Soon enough, though, they migrated over to the feeder, even though the Cackle Hatchery guide doesn't suggest giving them a feeder the first day.
The ducklings immediately demonstrated a ton more personality than the chicks. One of the surviving 5 ducklings likes to look at you out of his/her left eye, cocking its head in a quizzical fashion. It has full mobility of its head, can groom itself properly, has no balance issues, and is not being ostracized by the other ducklings. I suspect that it has a congenital spinal wonkiness (much like the cat in Owego we lovingly referred to as "Crooked Head" who was also quite adept at taking care of itself), so I'm keeping my eye on it to see if it has any issues. So far, the only noticeable effect has been an increase in the cuteness. The other 4 are completely indecipherable.
The ducklings are definitely messier than the chicks. While the chicks have to be taught how to drink, the ducks immediately took to the waterer and began not only to drink, but to play. All 5 prefer to walk in their waterer and throw water off the tips of their beaks at each other, the walls, me, whatever. As a result about half of the duck brooder's newspaper lining was wet almost immediately. They will clearly take more care than the chicks.
The ducklings have a couple of silly habits, too: they tilt their heads beak-up to drink water. They scurry around together as a 5-some if you move too quickly. They yawn. They stretch their legs after a 3-minute cat, err, duckling nap. They're super cute. Once I picked up Lefty to examine him/her more closely, and s/he started cheeping very, very loudly. One of the remaining 4 in the brooder advanced from the duckling-huddle and eyed me as if to say, "Whaddup, woman? Whatcha doin to my sib? Do I need to intervene?" I put Lefty back, and the 5 blurred into one ball of brown and yellow cuteness again.
I checked on them several times during the evening to make sure that they were still happy with their new living conditions, which they appeared to be.
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