Death Is a Part of Life

On Friday, I noticed that one of the ducklings seemed lethargic.  She was not as quick as the others to rise when I brought food or to flee from a sudden movement of my hands.  But the full range of duckling behavior is new to me, and I didn’t let myself get too worried.  I thought I might even be imagining it.  Later that night, when I went in to bring them some food, she was dead.  The other ducklings were still huddled together next to her, and her body was still warm – though I think that was mostly from the heat lamp.

I removed the body and buried it outside in the dark, then removed the other ducklings and gave the bathtub brooder and its contents a thorough cleaning.  I didn’t sleep well that night.  But the next morning, the three remaining ducklings were all still alive and seemingly healthy.

In the days since, they have continued to grow at a rapid rate.  On Saturday, I took them outside for the first time and put them in their future pen to explore.  They lay on the ground for a long time, huddled together, apparently unsure what to do.  I crouched nearby to observe.  When they finally mustered the courage to waddle around a bit, they made several brief forays, walking a couple of feet away, then turning around and slowly edging closer to me.  They seemed to be comforted by my crouched form, but startled every time I moved.  Then the neighbor’s dog barked nearby.  They all immediately ceased their peeping, ran around behind me, and dropped to the ground beneath my rear end.  Something about that moment gave me comfort.

Ducklings!

The garm now officially has livestock: yesterday we purchased four little female Welsh Harlequin ducklings.  Welsh Harlequins are known for their excellent egg production, strong foraging abilities, and friendliness toward people, so we have high hopes for them.  Despite my concerns over the fate of “excess” male ducklings produced by hatcheries, we bought sexed females only, because we decided that the prospect of getting a larger number of unsexed ducklings and likely having to slaughter several males only a few months later was too much for us to handle at this point in our garming lives.  We also decided that, since egg-laying breeds like Harlequins have mostly lost their brooding/mothering (if not mating) instincts, and we have no immediate plans to breed them anyway, there was no good reason for us to get a drake right now.  We’re taking this adventure one step at a time.

For now, I’ve made the tub in our guest bathroom into a brooder, taping over the drain and putting down a layer of wood shavings, then lowering the shower curtain rod and suspending a heat lamp from it.

The bathtub brooder

Water for the ducklings is provided in a cheap, automatically refilling circular trough – basically just a plastic jug turned upside down and screwed onto a lid with a little moat around it.  This set-up solves two problems at once: (1) it ensures they never run out of water, which ducklings need a lot of; (2) ie makes it harder for them to step in (and defecate in) their own water, which they still somehow manage to do but would presumably otherwise be doing with much greater frequency.

Their food is an organic poultry starter crumble, which I bought at our local co-op to ensure they have proper nutrition at this early stage.  I’ve also supplied a little clean sand as grit for their crops.  And they’re getting plenty of leafy greens, torn up into tiny pieces and floated in their water to keep fresh, as well as periodic deliveries of live isopods (sowbugs) and the occasional small slug or earwig.  They are figuring out how to eat these more natural foods, which is all part of the plan – when they reach adulthood (in only two short months or so), they will be foraging for most of their own food, and helping to reduce my garden pest population in the process.  (Turning slugs, snails, and other pests into delicious eggs, with minimal purchased food and other external inputs, is the grand design here, and the reason we decided to get ducks to begin with.)

Ducklings gathered at the waterer

Finally, they currently have access to a tub of water for swimming, complete with ramps to allow them to easily enter and exit.  I’m providing the swimming water because I’ve read that allowing ducklings to swim in their first few days stimulates their waterproofing oil glands, which otherwise do not become active until nearly adulthood.  And the ramps are there because I’ve also read that chill and drowning are primary causes of mortality among ducklings, typically resulting from an inability to get out of the water when they need to.

I have now placed the ducklings in the water several times.  Each time, they panic for the first second or two, then settle in and begin happily paddling around and nibbling at the leaf scraps I’ve provided.  The second time I put them in, they discovered that they could go under the water, too, and seemed to delight in repeatedly half-diving and submerging their little heads and bodies.

Before I left them alone with the swimming water, I made sure that all of them knew how to get out of the tub and safely back to the dry wood shavings under the heat lamp.  They figured that part out fairly quickly.  As far as I can tell, however, they have yet to turn back around, climb the ramp, and re-enter the water of their own volition.  I’m not sure if that’s because they haven’t figured out that they can do that, or because they don’t really want to swim, despite their apparent enjoyment of the activity.

Swimming in the tub

Eating & swimming

They’ll probably be in the bathtub brooder for three or four weeks, at which point they’ll have grown too big for it and will have to be moved to either a makeshift pen in the garage or to the old chicken house which I cleaned up and prepared as part of their future adult nighttime quarters.  In the meantime, we’re enjoying their company in the house – and keeping the bathroom door closed and latched so the dog and cat have no opportunity to meet them.

Getting to Know You

The recent additions to our household were intended mostly to provide companionship for us.  But of course they have to deal with each other, too.

Nyxie and Baxter are slowly coming to terms with each other.  We’re training Nyxie that she can’t chase Baxter around the house, and that she has to leave him alone when he swats at her (he does it with claws retracted, so she’s not very intimidated).  She’s fascinated by him, and left to her own devices will follow him, lick him, and try to play with him pretty much any time he moves.

Meanwhile, Baxter has figured out that he’s the boss, and often seems to taunt Nyxie by swatting playfully at her when she passes and generally having a good time within easy reach of her, then objecting when she pays too much attention.

A demonstration of relaxation (Baxter) and self-restraint (Nyxie)

Keeping Christine company while she works

Nyxie is fascinated by Baxter’s acrobatics on the clothes drying rack.

With us, Baxter continues to be a happily obliging lap-cat.  He sleeps all day, purrs like a motorboat in our arms in the evenings and then goes into hyperdrive at night, often keeping us up by racing around the house and literally bouncing off the walls.  Nyxie is smart, loving, and strong-willed, learning rules and commands quickly and then immediately pushing the boundaries to figure out if she can ignore or avoid them and do what she wants anyway.  She and I challenge each other every day.  We also snuggle on the couch.

All in all, the two of them continue to add more excitement, warmth, dirt and unusual smells to our lives each day.