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Duckling Surprise. [1]

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Date: 2022-06-29

One of the three that have hatched so far.

No, it's not a weird recipe your mom clipped from a 1980s women's magazine. It's what happens when the ducklings you bought back in the early days of the pandemic have grown up, and decided to make babies.

At the beginning of June I noticed this. Eight little green eggs, which were laid in a somewhat ramshackle nest by my mallard hen. She was very protective of them, and I decided to let her keep them.

I wondered why my mallard hen hadn't made her nest inside the Quackhouse. Turned out, it was already occupied.

These two are BFFs-with-benefits, and are sharing the egg brooding duties. I don't expect all of their dozen or so eggs to hatch, because the one at left is gay. And beats the snot out of any drake that tries to get frisky with her. The one at right however is bi, and whichever eggs she laid could very well be fertile. None of theirs have hatched yet.

I put shade cloth around the short fence surrounding the Quackhouse to give them some privacy. Yesterday afternoon I was out there and saw that three ducklings had hatched. They're in the corner behind their mom.

At one day old they are lively and eating well.

This morning I noticed the mom cleaning up the nest, eating the eggshells and rolling one egg out. That egg turned out to be infertile (I checked, nothing remotely resembling an embryo in there) and had cracked. I removed the dud egg, and now there are four remaining in the nest. As long as Mom is able and willing to care for them, I'll leave the ducklings with her. Otherwise I'll bring them indoors to raise myself.

There's nothing I could share with you today that could possibly be better than my Duckling Surprise. I hope you enjoyed seeing it.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/6/29/2107282/-Duckling-Surprise

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