Such a half-baked idea was how we ended up with Charlotte, our chatty Pekin duck.
She made her debut into our family on Easter 2014, complements of the Easter Bunny. All yellow and fuzzy, she was pretty much impossible to resist. Gil thinks she is pretty great...
Getting her into the basket was filled with some interesting bumbles that perhaps I can help other future duck owners avoid.
...or you can laugh at me, because you already know all these things...
Since we already had chickens, I thought the process would be a simple two steps:
1. Buy the duck
2. Bring the duck home.
INSTANT DUCKLING JOY!
Um... yeah. It didn't go like that. Here's a more realistic picture of what happened and what I learned from the experience:
STEP 1: Acquiring the duck (really step one is working out their housing situation, but we already had a brooder left over from our chickens that served the purpose)
The super-wise, always prepared Easter Bunny (okay, it's me and I'm neither of those things) went to get a duck at the feed store. The first problem instantly appeared. They only had "straight run" ducks. And the employees wouldn't help the clueless Easter Bunny sex ducklings.
But I was not to be deterred! So, living in fear of snagging a drake (dangerous to keep in close quarters with hens and not allowed in the city), I hastily pulled up a YouTube video and a detailed diagram of duck genitalia in the store and learned how to sex ducklings.
LESSON 1: Learn to distinguish duckling parts before you go to the store. You get odd looks asking bystanders if they know how to sex ducklings. Also, it's stressful to try mastering the "flip and peek" method with an audience.
LESSON 2: Some ducklings don't particularly care for being flipped upside down and having their parts popped out. The important take away here is that an unhappy drake can hide his parts.
I may have checked Charlotte 3 separate times before determining that she was definitely a girl and not a resistant boy. That means I flipped her over 3 times. And once or twice after we got her home. It's a miracle she still likes people.
Photographic evidence that she does not hate the human race...
 |
| Photo Credit: Maureen Armstrong |
LESSON 3: Acquiring an older duck will allow you to distinguish between the sexes with greater ease (but they are not as cute). While ducks make the same sound as ducklings, eventually only female ducks will quack. Drakes make a deeper, raspier sound. Also, drakes get a lovely little curl in their tail feathers.
I know what you are thinking. This is not helpful when looking at ducklings! Every blog brought these up as ways to tell the difference, but in that moment at the store, I almost felt enraged that this useless information was served up so high in my search results.
So I stood there, more than a little bit frazzled, flipping ducklings upside down and exposing their parts.
STEP 2: Taking the duck home.
After deciding on Charlotte, I paid for her and headed home. I naïvely thought that would be the only complication.
But I was wrong, of course. This brings me to my next bit of wisdom...
LESSON 4: Don't get just one duck or be prepared for handling their companionship needs if you do.
I had read before we got Charlotte that ducks (including, but not limited to Pekins) are happiest in pairs or groups. I interpreted that to mean that they would survive by themselves, but long term it would be best for them to have companionship.
Well, from my personal experience, the reference materials should have said that ducks will go absolutely insane without a buddy. They will experience total, complete, absolute panic when left alone. Charlotte was totally FREAKED OUT!
She left her food and water untouched in the brooder and frantically let out the saddest, loudest peeps.
It was too late at night by the time we established she was not going to calm down to go back and get a second duck, but Charlotte seemed so stressed, we were concerned she might actually die.
Hello self, what did you get yourself into? You do not want to be responsible for the demise of a fuzzy little duckling.
Fortunately, my husband came to the rescue. At 11 pm at night, after some hasty internet searches on what to do, Abe rushed to a 24 hour store and got a small mirror and a beanie baby.
That's right... a mirror and a stuffed animal. You see, the duckling will think the mirror is another duck and will calm right down. The stuffed animal gave her something to snuggle with.
I was skeptical. Also, desperate. Lucky for us, the second she saw the mirror, the lamenting stopped and she snuggled right up against it with the stuffed animals.
Now she sticks to our chickens like glue. She loves them.
If there's one thing I can count on, it is that things never go exactly to plan around here, but eventually everything turns out just fine. At least it has so far...
No comments:
Post a Comment