Sad News

The duck raising life has been an interesting one! We can all say that we have learned a lot in just one week. The first night the ducks were outside in their hutch we lost three. They were killed by some animal but we are not sure. We realized that the first time we built the pen and home we created it to ensure that the ducks could not escape. After we lost three we rebuilt so that nothing could get in to kill them. You learn. That same day we also added two chickens to our flock. They were free to us and actually pretty cute.

Then..another sad turn of events... one of the little chickens drowned in the kiddy pool.

After the ducks were attacked we started looking into buying a goose with the hope that it would protect the flock. We found one that was pretty inexpensive and got it. Personally, I was frightened and had heard terrible things about geese but this one was sweet and really funny to watch. He knew he was the odd ball and would follow around the other birds who would run away from him. Along with the goose we got two more chickens from the same farm.

Here is our appropriate technology at its finest!

To recap we had 7 ducks, 3 hens, and 1 goose. Things were getting serious. We figured out creative ways to herd them into their house at night etc.

Then a storm came. The storm took down a huge branch and it fell on our fence. So whenever that happened the hutch became fully available for creatures of all types to approach. And they did. One of our interns, Alyssa, went over to the bird pen in the morning and found all of the birds dead. Some of them were brutally attacked and other ones just looked like they had the life sucked out of them. So we took care of the bodies and facilities came and chopped up the huge limb.