hi guys,
not so mucha question, but i jsut wanted to tell you about our mad flock. they were strange enough before but the whole little social circle that exists in ou rgarden has ad me in fits agin all weekend.
We have 6 chickens, delilah, lickin, amber, muma, joe and elvis. delilah rules the roost. 3 of the girls are ex battery, the other 3 came fomr a firen who coudl no longer keep them.
in additon to this we have buster and belle, my breeding pair of campell whites. buster thinks he's king off the garden, and any of hat nonsense you hear about ducks being subserviant to a chicken.... not our boy. will attack at will. we've now seperated them off for the summer, btu even on the odd let out into the main garden he will pounce, and if i'm feeding them all worms or slugs, he visibly shakes if he's stood next tot a chicken, and the chicken gets fed first!!
he also started charging us around new year time. we put it down to the fact he saw the fox get his first mate, and figured it woudl stop at some point. he doesnt attack anyone, just waits for their back to be turned and will charge behind, head down in full duck attack mode. however, if you turn round and stop he ceases his run immediately and pretend to be eating grass! sounds mad, but ive watched him do it engough to nearly choak through laughter mroe times than i can count.
introduce a summer of ducklings to the equasion.... belle woudlnt sit on the eggs, and given she has been subjected to buster big balls wanting to spread the love so to speak on a hourly basis osme days over the last 3 motnhs, we got an incubator.
4 hatched the frist time. there was without a doubt ans element of imprinting going on the first time as they'd cry if i lft he room and follow me round the garden wehn they graduated to outside status ina little line.
Buster had serious issues with other ducks being in his garden and woudl wedge himself against their run if he was out, woudl pace up and down in his if the ducklings were wandering about in the main garden,a nd then took to escaping his pen. not something he'd doen before and clearly with one intention..... TO EAT THE DUCKLINGS! not that he did eat them, just liked ot pin them down and attack them. y the time they reached 5 weeks belle had realsied they were other ducks and wanted to be friends, but given they'd been pulped by buster already they woudl run away from her.
Belle i shoudl point out at this moment, isnt what you'd call the nicest duck. she quacks liek crazy if you go within 20 foot of her, won't come anywhere near any of us, and generally the words 'shut up belle' are heard a lot. she also appears to tell buster which chicken to attack as shes makes this certian quack and starts pointing her head at a chicken and off he runs ready to assert his authority!
In 2 sets of 2, this lot went to live with 2 different lots of our friends at 7 weeks old. no aloof stroppy campell white nature fomr these 4 who love people and who are huge and healthy. this is my mind says i did a good job!
at the point they left we had a chicken gone broody, so figured we'd put her to good use and popped 3 eggs under her, more of an experiment than anyhting, but at 10 days all 3 seemed to be growing. so after that we elft them be, and let muma do her job. just as they were startign to pip muma decided she'd had enough and left the nest. as a pure stroke of luck i was off work this day. all 3 eggs were brought in and popped into the incuabator. after over 24 hours of one struggling (the other 2 did nothgin and having candling them after 3 days later i'm not 100% sure they were ever growing proprly) so as i say after 24 hours of watchign this one struggle to get out (of which i'm guessing was mroe difficualt given their was no water on the underside of the chicken to keep the eggs moist) i hatched beep.
it wasnt ever the intention she'd be on her own, but i wasnt going to let her die trying to get out. erm, we now sort of have a human duck.
she pretty quickly worked out if she cried, we'd coem running, so i spent most of the first week asleep on the sofa during the night to keep her company. she'd sit between my feet in the kitchen whilst i cooked, on our laps watchgn tv, or most of the time, on our shoulders. really easy when she was small, but shes a bit big for it now and her claws are sharp!!!! see my cricked neck and scratches for details.
she spends the day in her run in the garden, but at ngith time comes into the house. shes started to get cheeky, if a duck can.... if i'm eating she will reach up and try and take the food out of my mouth and generally rules the roost.
my problem is buster.... he's not escaping now to try and eat her, namely because we found his escape route and blocked it off. but he is pacing up an down just waiting for the chance.
i'm tryign to prevent this happening so that when belle realises beep is a fellow duck, beep wont be alreay traumatised!
so my questions are these..,...
anyone had an issue with a bolshy duck? if so is there anyway i can knock this out of him?
and what do i do with the human duck who at this rate will still want to sit on our shoulders at full grown size?!!
Topic: hand reared duckling (Read 3391 times)
