Summertime

July is nearly over and it has been hot. Hot weather puts our duckies in a bad mood, especially the boys. Grumpy boys make things especially hard on the girls given our upside down ratio of 3 boys and 2 girls. However over all it has been an event-less month or so.

The girls are dealing with the boys and our little flock of pet duckies is general happy healthy and peaceful.

Here are a few pictures and videos.


We have company (including my animal loving niece) so the duckies might get more treats and attention this weekend.

My animal loving niece is here

No power = no well pump = no water

The hardest thing about no electricity is keeping the ducks clean and comfortable. No power = no well pump = no water

We actually keep about 10gal of drinking water and 3 6 gal jugs for washing and flushing around the house just in case, but duckie care requires much more water than we can store.

Here are a few pictures of cooling off the duckies with frozen peas and ice cold lettuces

Silly Queenie

Summer has arrived and so has the hot humid weather.

We put a dish in one of the duck house nest boxes to give them water over night and still limit the big splashy mess they usually make with water.

I think Queenie had a very strong opinion about this though. I am not sure yet if she thinks it needs to go or maybe she thinks it was only for her, since it was in a nest box) and was standing guard over it. In any case she cracked us up this morning.

We also added a small tarp for extra shade. They are of course a little afraid of it (it is new - a change). We are still working (slowly) on other shade improvements and vegetation improvements. The duck aviary will be a constant work in progress.

Peace and delight

We got to spend a good part of the first part of the day just hanging with the duckies.

a coyote not a fox (updated post)

Stock picture of Coyote from the web

Oh no! A bold fox (correction: coyote) in our backyard (garden side) in the bright morning light this morning. While we don't mind a little rodent control, we worry for our duckies. As we went off to work we were hoping and praying our duck aviary (enclosure) is as predator proof as we designed to be.

Our duckies look so innocent ... we hope they have a good day playing in the rain we are supposed to get and that the preditors stay away.

SCARY CORRECTION!!
GrMaDuck thought it looked like a gray fox but it's face was more dog like, so I we looked up pictures on the web.  It was a coyote!  (see top of updated post)
It was not scared of us but when GrMaDuck charged at it yelling it trotted away.
It was coyote that took our first feathered family members, so we are worried.  Of course we didn't have the bigger safer duck enclosure that we have now.

cooling off on a hot spring morning

It is a hot spring morning.  So we decided to spray them with hose on the gentle shower setting.  (We didn't get any pictures of this).  They loved it.  The drakes would side step just to stay in the right place to get the most of the cooling spray.

Then we propped it to shower over the pool and back of the "aviary".  Being Saturday the girls were given their weekly girlie duckie time in the pool without the boys.   The boy duckies enjoyed digging in the drainage "stream" behind the aviary. 

Then everybody got some time together to hang out at the pool and enjoy the soft shower spray from the hose.

Then we cleaned out the pool (again) and once again split up the boys and girls.  The girls look like they are getting bumble foot again.  With the weather warmer, the ground is harder, and the boys really are not generous about sharing the pool, so our girlie duckies don't get to clean their feet very often.  It is one of the reasons we make sure they get "no boys allowed" pool time on Saturdays.

The boys got more dig and forage time.

Beau cracked us up.  He lied down in the "drainage" stream and dug in and drank the water that was flowing down.  He was doing his best not to miss anything.  It was so funny to watch.

We love our funny duckies.

Beau



Darrick



Kouta



Missy



Queenie

hand feeding

As our ducks get older they get less interested in being touched. This is healthy as they develop an identity as a flock and recognize we humans are not ducks. On of the "tricks" to keeping the close is to hand feed treats.