Tidbits is going to be changing gears for a few weeks to accommodate an exciting new adventure in the Nugteren house.
Ducklings.
I mean seriously, not much is cuter than baby ducks, right?
We came by this unintentionally, but none-the-less, we are excited. And nervous. I mean, I'm nervous. We all know this is mostly going to be my gig with some Dad help in the evenings and on weekends. Our kids are also going to be called into action, but they are 7 & 9 and still in school for a few more weeks! I'm trying to quickly get my undergrad in egg and duckling care via Google as we speak, but I know a lot of it is learning on-the-job. Yikes.
A little background on how this came about. We live in a suburb, but our backyard has a pond in it. Hence the ducks. We also live very near a big nature area. Hence the fox. We didn't know we had a duck nest right outside our front door, until the fox started coming around. I was sitting at the table, eating breakfast, when I noticed a big animal (I thought a dog) by our front door. When I got up to look, I was shocked to see a fox. It was 9:00! It grabbed something under the bush and ran off. A few minutes later it was back. This time I could tell the fox had an egg in it's mouth, and I noticed the agitated mama duck 50 feet away. Every couple of minutes the hungry fox came back and every few minutes I scared him off. Eventually he stopped, and mama duck returned to her nest. That was Monday, May 2. I took a couple of photos and videos to show my husband and the kids. The kids and I were so excited to see the mama duck on her nest and excited to see the ducklings hatch!
Tuesday he returned again, mid-morning, and I had to keep scaring him off.
By Wednesday I was ready to put up a little protective fence around the nest, but it was too late. When we went outside to catch the bus, the area around the bus was littered with masses of feathers. The fox didn't return and neither did the mama duck. We had to discuss how, though sad, there were probably some very hungry baby fox nearby who needed food, too. Circle of life.
RIP Mama Duck! :-(
By now we were emotionally invested and couldn't watch the fox come back any more to finish off the unprotected nest. We brought the eggs inside. All ten of them. Gulp.
A little searching on Google let us know that we were going to need an incubator. My first clue that this was not going to be simple. Luckily my husband found one locally on Craigslist. Now the fun ( work?) begins. Duck eggs need to be kept humid, too. It's very specific actually, but since we don't have a way to measure this, we are just doing our best with hot water bowls in the incubator. I really hope that is good enough! There is also a very important temperature range the eggs need to be kept at. Between 99 an 99.5 degrees. Did you catch that? That is NOT a range. Again, just doing our best here. Luckily, the incubator has a thermometer and is adjustable. The last bit of important egg sitting information is turning the eggs. Three times a day. It is so they don't develop and adhere to the shell. Kind of like duckling bedsores. I'd be curious to see a mama duckling turning her eggs a third of a turn three times a day....
The first day we had the eggs indoors, my husband Tony, candled them to make sure they were all alive. Candling is when you hold a bright light (flashlight) behind them to see inside. In this picture, you can see a red center spot with veins coming out of it. You can also see the air sack at the bottom. The little red spots moved all around. We think this was day 5 - 7.
This is our Hovabator incubator. Pretty low tech, but it does the job.
Over Mother's Day weekend we went to South Dakota to visit our families. We had to line up an egg sitter. We dropped off the incubator, with instructions at our neighbors house. (Thank you Angie!!) Thankfully they have two young girls who were thrilled to help. Once these ducklings hatch, I'm thinking we will definitely be calling them again! We have only a vague idea of when the eggs will hatch, as we don't know exactly how old the eggs are. We are speculating the last week in May. Of course, we are supposed to stop turning the eggs 2 - 3 days prior.... I'm not sure how we are going to get that one right!
I'll post again when they start to "pip" out. (that is the technical term - thank you Google!)
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