Duckling Terror

Every year since we started our chicken flock at Green Acres, I have been able to raise a few new hens by fostering purchased chicks with broody hens.  Overall, with a few hitches along the way, it works amazingly well… for chickens.  I wish I could say the same for ducks.  You might recall my ambitious attempt to get a broody chicken to raise duckling for me when I added ducks last year. The poor mama hen had no idea what to do with a passel of independent minded little ducklings, and I had to drag out my heat lamp and do the work myself. 

This year, one of the ducks decided to go broody.  Not wanting more ducks, I thought I could wait her out. Well, she not only refused to give up brooding, she recruited another duck to join her sitting in the nest boxes.  Since the ducks like to travel in a group, after a few days all 5 of the ducks, including our male, Blake the Drake, were declining to go to the pond, instead spending the day hanging out inside the duck house (affectionately known as the quack shack).  I threw them out.   They went to the pond until I left and then came back to the shack!  That wasn’t safe!  Between the foxes and coyotes, this summer the free-range chickens up and down Marshall Rd were being picked off at an alarming rate.  Ducks inside the open quack shack during the day literally defined the meaning of “sitting ducks”.   I started closing them in all day, to keep them safe, but their enclosure was not large enough to give them adequate space, so that wasn’t a practical long-term solution.

I knew that if they hatched ducklings, that would break the brood.  Plus, it would make my neighbor Don, whose pond hosts the ducks, happy.  Maybe I should just leave the eggs with them, and let them do their thing? But September was almost here, and it would be at least 28 days before babies hatched. A mother duck raising babies with winter approaching didn’t seem like a good idea.   Plus, with the ducks wrestling for places to lay in the nest boxes, eggs were getting smashed right and left.  The chance of successfully raising our own ducklings seemed bleak.   

I decided to try foster parenting.  After all, it works for chickens! But ordering a few ducklings by mail, with the small-order shipping fee added in was a $100 proposition.  I wasn’t ready to spend $100.  Tractor supply was approaching their last week of having chicks and duckling, so time was limited. I started calling daily.  After a couple of days, I lucked out.  Ducklings had arrived.   Armed with three 2-day old ducklings, I headed for the duck enclosure.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be able to slip the ducklings under a broody duck. Unlike my broody chickens, who stay in the nest when I collect eggs each day, the broody ducks jump out of the nest boxes when I come egg collecting, returning only after I leave. I was just going to have to put the ducklings in with the ducks and hope that maternal instinct would take over when the broody ducks saw and heard ducklings.

I wish I had been taking a video of what actually happened, because I could have gotten my daughter to help me post it online, gotten a million views, and been rich and famous.  Instead, you will just have to use your imagination.  So, here we go.  Imagine three very small ducklings wandering around fearlessly in a small enclosure, while 5 full grown ducks cower in the corner, scream in terror, and then run and hide inside the quack shack.  Not to be discouraged, I collected the ducklings and tried again to introduce them to the ducks, this time inside the shack.  That resulted in further panic and a mad stampede by the adult ducks.  The duckling were at risk of being trampled to death. I had to dive into the middle of the frenzy to rescue them. 

Needless-to-say, the ducklings transitioned to being raised under a heat lamp, but thankfully not by me.  Neighbors and their kids, who had recently brought home chicks, were kind enough to agree to add the ducklings to their young flock, where they are thriving.  But hey, one thing about the plan worked.  Having seen just how terrifying ducklings are, the ducks decided they did not want to be parents after all and gave up brooding.  Every day since, all the ducks have spent their day on the pond.