As I described in the opening segment … I was on my first cup of coffee, doing my morning situational awareness review (SAR) (news, weather, etc.) when it dawned on me that I was hearing something … a bird of some sort … that struck me as … different. I thought, hmmm, sounds like a baby chicken. DOAH! I forgot about the duck eggs in the incubator in the window sill behind me!
Sure enough … first baby duckling had hatched! As you may recall, I found a clutch of duck eggs in a next next to my duck pond, and couldn’t find the mother duck. Thinking perhaps a coyote got her, I moved all 20 of the eggs into an incubator. I’ve incubated over a 100 chicken eggs, but never any duck eggs (until NOW!). I did some research, and estimated their hatch date to be the 10th of October. Obviously, I was only 2 days off. We ended up with three newborn ducklings by the end of the day, and there is still about 7 eggs in the incubator, with one showing signs of hatching now.
Also found that one of my mamma rabbits dropped a litter of 10 to 12 new rabbit kits into a nest box over night.
Then, I found a free-ranging rabbit of mine with a whole nest of maggot larvae in an open wound in her neck. GROSS!
Spent some quality time with the pupperino (Deuce). He and Hooey helped me unfurl a big ol’ hay roll in the freshly seeded ‘park’ next door, which we’ll need to distribute over 1.8 acres today (Tuesday).
Long day … but a good day. Country living at it’s best.