It's getting crowded in here!

Note:
OK, no more excuses.  It is December, almost the end of the year.  Time to finally update everyone on how the whole "duck thing" ended up.  Since I am way behind, I am going to be posting several  old updates that never made it past the draft stage.  So, for the the remaining "duck" posts, when I say "yesterday", you know I mean "June, July or August".  I'll try to include the date.  Thanks for your patience! 

The Eggs - May 26, 2011
Yesterday was a big day. When we woke upu, one duckling had already hatched. A little bit later, the second duckling was ready and we got to watch the big event. What a struggle! When they are finally free of the egg, they just lay on the ground and rest for a while (you can see that in the pictures). Luckily, yesterday was a late start day at school so the kids were still home. After the first two ducklings hatched, nothing much happened for a long time. After lunch, I checked the eggs and saw nothing. I headed outside to do some planting. When I cam back inside 45 minutes later, there were three ducks! Then later, four. Five. By late last night we had six ducklings. This morning we have seven. I'm nut sure about the last three eggs. They don't have anything happening yet - we'll see!






The Fans
Yesterday was also a big visitation day. We had lots of curious children and their parents come to see the hatching ducklings. These little ducklings are quite the celebrities! Of course, they don't know that.





The Big Move - May 27, 2011
The newly hatched ducklings have to stay in the incubator for 12 hours after hatching. That gives them plenty of time to dry out and fluff up. It's also important for us to keep the incubator shut as much as possible to keep the humitity inside so the remaining unhatched ducklings don't have their cracked egg membranes dry out. That could be fatal to them. The ducklings were VERY ready to be out of their incubator by this morning. They were jumping all over inside and pecking at the glass windows. Tony assembled a "brooder" box for them yesterday, so we were all ready to go. This morning we moved the first six ducklings to their new home. (The seventh duckling just hatched and isn't ready.) This was the first time we got to hold the ducklings. I don't know if I can say this enough - THEY ARE SO CUTE! Even thoug they are tiny, they are still quite big in comparison to their shell. The shell was about 1/4 air pocket - so that means that the duckling was squeezed into the remaining 3/4. It's amazing how fast they develop, too. If you go back in my posts, you'll see the picture of the "candled" egg. That was just before Mother's Day. At that point, you can see that the egg still contained just a bunch of interconnected veins. Speedy growth!

So now the ducklings are in their brooder box (Thank you, Google!). They have a water supply, duckling food, a heat lamp and a teddy bear. The teddy bear is because they need something to imprint on. They think the bear is their mama. She is warm, soft and cuddly. She also lets the ducklings climb all over her. Awwww!! The ducklings will stay in the brooder box most of the time until... we don't know. Until they don't fit, I guess!



Photos
Here are some pictures to enjoy from yesterday and this morning. I'm having a hard time uploading the video, so that will come later. Enjoy!