Today was the first warm day in awhile. It follows two stressful days for our duckies. Two days ago a red tailed hawk tried to attack/ hunt them. The hawk was on the outside of the aviary on the back side. He/she was watching and attacking from the dogwood tree back there. The hawk tried several times to get through the fence. The duckies were safe inside and the hawk didn't even harm the fence. GrPaDuck went outside and shooed the hawk away. We are thankful for our predictor proof enclosure, but it was disturbing to us and extremely frightening to the duckies. The duckies all ran fast and jumped into there pool. During all the panicked running and jumping pretending to fly, Kouta our male pekin, slightly sprained his knee.
It was so sweet to see his best bud Darrick refuse to leave his side. Kouta was smart enough to stay in the big pool which took the weight off of his leg. Unfortunately, the big pool was a day away from being cleaned and no longer has a contact slow flow of water into it. By the end of the day, with Kouta not leaving the pool and Darrick faithfully at his side the pool was really yucky and Kouta's feathers were getting yucky.
So the next day, yesterday, Kouta and Beau spent the day in mandatory rest all day. We separated them to half of the "duck house" (with food and water of course) so Kouta would rest his leg. We didn't want him walking much and definitely didn't want him climbing in and out of the pool.
The day of rest seemed to have done its job. This morning Kouta is not limping.
So with warm weather, all the pools cleaned and the humans flock members letting the hose water run, the duckies had a wonderful morning.