Teenagers…

The animal kind, I have no tips or tricks when it comes to the human kind. Now that I’m in my twenties the human teenagers in my life make no sense to me. Remember those adorable itty bitty ducklings. Not so adorable or itty bitty now. Roughly the size of small cats the youngsters have got their pin feathers starting to come in. They will molt twice before I let them run with the big dogs. I moved them to my teen cage. They have a small trough in this cage with water in it so they can take a full bath but it’s not deep enough to drown in.

Actually, it is deep enough to drown in. I have lost a few ducklings in this through trial and error. Ducklings can swim from day one, what they can’t do is figure out when it’s time to get out of the water. That is what mommy is for. They stay in the water too long and get too cold to get out. At first I filled the trough to the top so that it was simply a 1″ step to get out. That didn’t work half of them got in and out no problem, the dumber half stayed in too long. I only lost 2 that time and managed to rescued the others. Next time I filled it near full and put in several large rocks at either end of the 20″ trough so they could step on a rock and hop out nice and easy. At least it seemed nice and easy. Next day I had lost another one. Remember this all happened about a year ago none of the ducklings you have seen pictures of have died. 100% success rate in 2016, at least with ducklings.

What is currently working is 2 big rocks still and I fill it with a 5 gallon bucket of water. That fills it to about 1/3 of capacity, deep enough to bathe in and yet not deep enough for them to drown in. When I first started out I was very concerned about them drinking poopy water, gross they might get sick. So I gave them bath water and clean water. They drank both depending on which was closer. With my big ducks they seem to prefer the brown/green water. Whenever I dump their big trough to refill they all rush over and start slurping down the puddles on the ground. What a group of weirdos. Now I don’t worry about it for the teens. They have a drain in the bottom of the trough I drain it and refill it every other day. The adults I dump and refill once a week. Haven’t had any sick ducks or deaths so they must be okay!

The teens got moved to a bigger cage A: because the bigger the duck the bigger the poo, it was getting ripe in there with the 8 ducklings I had left (I sold some). B: Because when they don’t have enough space they start pulling each others feathers out. C: Because I had 10 new babies who needed the cage space. There are also 5 nests that I know of one of them has a dozen goose eggs, and there are plenty more that I haven’t found yet. Spring has sprung! Now if those dang pigs would just farrow already, I have customers lined up waiting and no piglets to give them!