Can’t get enough of Coraline’s ducklings? We’ll be posting periodic updates to our blog so you can watch them grow. And like all baby farm animals, they’ll grow fast!
Today, Coraline brought her little troop out into the grassy enclosure. The ducklings are very lively and very, very curious. They emulate their mom’s behavior, nibbling on greens and catching bugs. All she has to do is make her “mom peep” at them and they get back in formation behind her.
We put netting over the top of her enclosure already, but realized shortly afterward that the fencing had gaps large enough for the ducklings to get through… Continue reading “Duckling Update #2”
We got a good look at Coraline’s ducklings this morning, and they are cute as can be. One of the quick photos we snapped before she got too huffy showed eight little ones. We also thought we spied one unhatched egg, which is still within the “normal” hatching timeframe – actually, it could conceivably even hatch within the next few days.
Coraline and the ducklings drank some water (we put a small chicken “fountain” waterer in there, too small for any of the ducklings to accidentally fall in), ate some food, and mom even took a couple of bites of the slightly out-of-control vegetation growing in the duck enclosure; we noticed that when she went for the greens, she positioned herself in front of the ducklings on the coop ramp so they couldn’t come out. They’ll be chowing down on greens and bugs in no time, too. 
We had another night of severe storms, with forecasted winds of up to 55 mph. After the chicken tractor went aloft in the last windstorm, we modified it by shortening the tarp providing shade and cover on top; the result was that less than a quarter of it remained covered. There’s no way that thing could take off again.
Yesterday was the 20th day of incubation for the Muscovy eggs in our incubator. We’ve been turning them 3 times a day by hand (even though the incubator has an autoturner), manually cooling once a day (even though the machine has an autocooling feature customizable for waterfowl), and misting with water daily. Are you wondering why we would choose the manual route when the incubator could do everything except the misting for us?
Can you believe that the rabbit kits are nearly 8 weeks old now? It was looking crowded in the kindling cages – there were 20 babies, after all – so we built two additional tractors this weekend. These are tractors number 4 and 5, and we made minor modifications to improve on the original design; specifically, reducing the width slightly to allow for a larger roof overhang (we get good storms out here). It’s all about continuous improvement!
Construction never seems to go quite as planned. We encountered the typical twisted lumber issues; even better, we discovered a roll of cage wire had a major defect (a gap where it was missing wire) that wasn’t visible until we had wrapped more than half the tractor and secured it with screws. Rather than undo it all to take the wire back, we patched it and continued on. It was a bad surprise, though, meriting choice expletives.