Day #5: May 17, 2011

I had to get up early this morning to get the ducks taken care of before school. I mean, 5:30 early, which is a whole huge lot earlier than I usually get up. When I checked on the chicks, I noticed that the hospital I had built for the injured, small chick was empty, and when I counted the chicks in the bin, there were indeed 16. Apparently, she felt well enough to rejoin the flock, so I figured, who am I to try to isolate her? She's still smaller than the other chicks, but none of the others are acting like she is, and all of the others are starting to get their wing and tail feathers while she is not. Well, she has a few, but she is quite delayed.

I've heard that there is often a cannibal in the group, and that they will peck a weak one to death as soon as they sense weakness. She did seem to have some missing down on her back, and she didn't like when I tried to touch that area, so maybe she has been pecked. I hope not, but only time will tell.

I took the ducks swimming again today in the plastic wrapping paper bin. It is clear that they are too big to do that again. The first time I put them in, they were very, very tentative about the process. When they finally decided to move into the deep end, they were only paddling their feet, and one decided to push off the side and dive under his/her siblings. But by and large, it was baby ducks, floating cutely, looking pretty much like fuzzy rubber duckies. This time was different. They were all diving and pushing off of the sides, and they were kicking so much and so hard that I was practically soaked for babysitting them. I set the timer this time for 7:00 minutes, since they still seemed interested at the 5 minute mark last time they swam. Despite his/her awkwardness on land, Lefty is a decent swimmer. Not as decent as its siblings, but s/he can get around OK. I hope it continues to be able to do ducky-things, despite its deformity.

Day #3: May 15, 2011

I'm still amazed at quick both the ducks and the chicks have developed in the last 2 days. The chicks have continued to develop more and more chicken habits, and I noticed that a few of them seem to be developing at a slightly faster rate than the others. A few of them have been hopping around and flapping their wings, and one or two of them have been squaring off at each other and pecking each other in the face. When I am in the "west wing" where the birds live, I don't see them do this too often to really get my attention, and no one seemed to have any wounds, so I think they might just be trying to figure out who's at the top of the pecking order. Most of them are starting to get what look like real bird feathers on their wings, and their fluff is starting to come off. Even with these changes, the chicks are much less interesting to me than the ducks, who have a lot more personality than the chicks do.

I took the ducks swimming today. I had read that you should wait at least a week to take them swimming, and I had also read forum posts that had people taking ducks swimming as young as 4 days. The risks are that their oil gland isn't fully developed, and they won't be insulated from the water so they get chilled and die, or they just can't swim. Well, my ducklings can definitely swim.

I had a lot of evidence to suggest that they were ready for swimming before I decided to try it. They had made an enormous mess in their water in the morning, and when I watched them, they were splashing it all over themselves and then trying to groom themselves. they went through a quart of water in no time, mainly because they were trying to bathe in it.

I kicked out the killer cat, shut the scared one into the living quarters of the house, and got to work on constructing a swimming pool. Their swimming pool was a plastic wrapping paper bin, which I filled over my kitchen sink and tilted at a slight angle by balancing it on a baking dish on one end, creating a deep end and a shallow end and a ramp they could climb. I made sure the water was just about body temperature, and I set the oven timer for 5:00 minutes.

I put one duckling in at a time to make sure that they couldn't jump out of the deep end and onto my kitchen counter. When I put the first one in, s/he was confused and almost terrified. I set it into the shallow end, and it just looked at me with wet feet as if to say, "What are you doing now? You're not very good at this." I pushed it from the back, it tried to run away from me into the deep end and found it was actually easier to just kick its feet instead of run. It was paddling around the deep end in no time. So, I started the timer, and put the other 4 ducklings in the water. Lefty, who had begun to be off balance when drinking water, was a perfectly fine swimmer. Someone figured out how to dive almost immediately, and was diving under its siblings from end to end. Another one tried to dive, and most decided to at least duck their heads under water and bob while paddling. Super cute baby duck squeeworthy stuff, sprinkled with occasional bursts of "Wow, look how fast you are!"

5 minutes was up and the ducks were still being active and swimming about, but I decided to err on the side of caution and scoop them out and take them back to their brooder before they got chilled or waterlogged. When they got back, they all took to grooming themselves like they had been after they had made such a mess with their water that morning, further validating my decision to take them swimming.