One wrong move away from a complete putrid disaster. She was basically sitting on a nest of rotten ticking time-bombs. Why was it an emergency? Well, she had been sitting on those eggs for 34 days at that point (normally, duck eggs should take 28 days to hatch). We were prepared for ducklings to hatch, but not necessarily prepared for an emergency duck adoption, and it felt a little more frantic than I cared for. Thus is life on the homestead. In the future, I’d prefer to be slightly more prepared. This whole thing was sort of a last minute decision. I had to make it right. We found someone local with newly hatched ducklings and promptly picked up two tiny little babies to give her, thus initiating Operation Duck Adoption. With our new ducklings in a box, peeping up a storm- we raced to get everything in place. I felt terrible that she put in all that time and effort, over a month of sitting ALL day EVERY day while everyone else ran about the yard and enjoyed the lovely Spring we had. She was an awesome mother: extremely dedicated and protective of her nest, only getting up two or three times per day for a hurried swim and a quick bite of grass. Turns out there were too many eggs in her nest, too many to properly keep warm and develop- totally my fault. I thought she would know how to handle a nest of eggs, no matter the size. Once she was on them, I feared that she had too many eggs in there, but if I disturbed her nest it might cause her to stop sitting. I thought that by filling her nest with eggs, it would cause her to want to sit on them. Last month I shared that we had a broody duck sitting on a big ol’ nest of eggs. If you’d like to hear about life on the homestead, our crazy antics, and a story with a happy ending about a duck and her babies, well then- you’ll like this.Īnd if you are thinking of putting some baby ducklings under a broody duck and wondering if that will work and how that might look- then this one’s for you! I’ve also included the high-points, specifically, what steps I think lead to our success in putting baby ducks under a hen and the resulting happy duck family.
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