Want ducks to be good mothers? Well, I do highly recommend those Muscovy ducks, they do nothing else other than want to be great mothers, and that they are. Their hatches are always 12 out of 14, and the last hatch was 14 out of 14. So cute, so sweet, even when they grow up they are still sweet and nice ducks (well, exceptions must be made, like Whoppo, that nasty, nasty ol' drake that hated me, and surely let me know it. Sir Drake, his replacement, is nothing short of a beautiful gentleman, to me, and even how he treats his own girls, compared to that Whoppo dude, whom I am sure is doing a great job somewhere else).
We have 4 clutches of Muscovy babies, ranging from only 3 days old to 1 month old. I have tried here to get a good picture of the 3 clutches (are duck babies called clutches too? wonder that one, just doesn't sound right though). Have the most wonderful and awesome day, love life. Cindi
Part of the clan, there are 3 different hatches here, the picture doesn't really show well the different ages, but let your imagination run wild!!!
These were born on Tuesday, the first picture taken the day of the hatch, after the mother took a short break to have a bath and eat, the second picture was taken the day after they were born, oh so cute. And she took them outside of their chickenhouse on the third day, all 14 of them in tow, following the little sounds the mother makes so they they know she is their mother, and not any of the other birds out there.
And then there is Micky. She is the only chicken that we have that likes to go broody, and she has done that thing three times this summer. She is an excellent mother and cluck, cluck, clucks to her little babies in tow. She only hatched out 2 out of 8 eggs. This was because we moved her half way through her incubation because the chickens were bugging her and kept climbing into her house and laying eggs. I think the move disturbed her greatly, lessons learned.
I am showing the picture because when I was out in the chickenyard the other day, I thought something was seriously wrong with her, I thought that she had some weird injury or something, this was looking from a distance, but as I got closer, this is what I saw. It was the little chick peeping out from under her wing, and as I got closer it was more discernable. She always takes little breaks with her feeding the babies and poking around, and they huddle under her wing. Oh Micky is such a nice girl. She is not a very large chicken, I think she must be a cross between some kind of Banty and another, and she is pretty ugly. She is kind of a dirty looking white with some light specks on places on her body, and she just is not pretty, but she is worth her weight in gold to me. Have the most beautiful and wonderfully awesome day, Cindi