Duckdate.

Mother Duck with offspring.

Mother Duck, brooding.

Duckdate for 11/06/11

Our ducklings.

Fat little boogers.

Situation at 05/06/11. The three ducklings are doing very well indeed, confident and fat spring to mind. The other good news is that today (10/06/11), when I checked on mother duck, I found the second brood of eggs are about to hatch. So over the next few days we should have a whole heap of Mallard ducklings wandering around the garden.

And then there were three.

We think a B.O.P. must have taken one of the ducklings, one minute four then three. I searched until late but without success.

Duckling Update.

This photo was taken on 19/05/11.

Badger attacks mallard nest.

The excitement in the garden this season has been the resident Mallard duck had decided she would nest at the very bottom of the field, next to the (part buried) fence that stops the chicks escaping. When she had some twelve eggs and a cover made of corrugated sheet that I provided for her early on, she began to sit. All went well until the second week when disaster struck in the shape of a Badger attack. On my morning duties attending to the chickens I found the duck's nest had been completed wrecked. The whole thing had been dragged out from under the tin sheet and shredded. The beast had dug under the wire and all but four eggs had been eaten and those remaining were stone cold and so I thought that's the end of that. On the way back up the field I put the four forlorn eggs under a broody hen thinking that there may be a small chance of saving them. That was some weeks ago and the good news is we now we have four beautiful ducklings and the mother duck has made a new nest at the top of the garden near the house and so should be a little more safe from a badger attack. Fingers crossed.

Another new year.

Hi All,

Spring's here again and we've got more stuff for sale, particularly hatching eggs, young poultry and I've been building more coops.