I get asked that question a lot lately and the answer is, "the ducklings are great!" And they have been a source of constant entertainment since arriving.
The first few days the brothers sat vigil by their box...
Come to find out, so did the cat, but he waited until everyone else went to bed.
Not to worry, after seeing this the first night we double gated the dining room doors so he couldn't get in.
The dog was introduced to the ducks and not surprising, he was unimpressed.
We began bringing them outside for fresh air for short periods of time about two days after they arrived.
About two days later, on a particularly warm afternoon, we let them take their first dip in the water. A painters rolling pan was recommended as the slope allows easy entrance and exit.
It didn't take long for all of us to get tired of having to sit outside with them for several hours at a time chaperoning ducklings in a cardboard enclosure. So last week I built them something that we felt safe leaving them in unattended and they also graduated into a bigger tub for swimming.
In the last few days, after realizing that they will not scatter and prefer to stay close, we have begun letting them roam the backyard freely...which is really fun because if you call "duck duck duck" they will run and follow you all over the yard.
Here they are in our raised vegetable bed, where they prefer to spend most of the day...and where they have gobbled up lots of my plants. The lettuce was quickly mowed to nubs, the snap peas are withered to nothing and the pepper plants now stand leafless. The tomatoes are beginning to loose their bottom leaves and today I noticed that they are developing a taste for parsley, but there aren't any bugs running around the garden, so I guess there's that.
Here are two other funny ducks running around the backyard...
Looking at the progression of these photos really shows just how fast the ducklings are growing...
It only takes 9 weeks for them to reach full size. Isn't that crazy?
Thankfully the same can not be said for this dude...
I must say that I am surprised at the amount of personality displayed by these creatures. They want to be close to us all the time. If we are in the house and they hear us from their box in the other room, they peep like crazy for someone to come say hello to them. If we leave them in the backyard happily grazing in the garden it doesn't take long to find that they have traveled across the yard and up the back steps to the back door, peeping to see where we have gone.
This is how we spent our time a few days ago, reading a chapter book together in the backyard. *Note that I was reading to the big brothers and the ducks joined us, lest you think I was in the yard by myself reading to ducks, I might be "the weird duck lady" as Jon likes to call me, but I haven't gotten that weird!
So, the ducks are great and growing quickly and I'm anxious for them to feather out so they can move to their outside abode and vacate the box in the dining room which has become quite the stink bomb, regardless of how often it gets hosed out!
