Recent content by aychbe

CORRECTION: I pulled the eggs on 4/17... sorry, typo

Hello all! I had a hen go broody on me last month and I decided to pull the eggs & put them in the incubator because the last natural hatch I did resulted in a duckling with a broken leg. The hen is a rouen & the drake is a black swede. I pulled the eggs on 4/12 and my best estimation is she...

@Duck Drover The layout of my yard could potentially give them runway clearance at the moment. Most of my yard is a hill, not steep, just gradual. The yard comes to a flat for about 20 feet and then steeply drops off to the fence. I have a pond in the flat and normally I have a rather large...

I'm going to clip 1 wing. The predators I have to concern myself with are hawks and potentially eagles. I have deterrent tape up and that has kept them away for the past 3 years but if one were to strike, flying isn't going to help my drake escape. I'm not going to bother raising the fence...

@Duck Drover I had read about clipping only 1. I wasn't sure of its effectiveness but I'll give it a try tomorrow.

@fourkidsandduck Thanks! I'm not sure what's gotten into him as of late. He's around 2 years old and I suspect that this is mostly hormonal as he charges a lot and he went from having 2 hens during last mating season to only 1 at the moment. There is nothing outside the fence besides speeding...

I have a black swedish drake who is managing to get over my 3.5' high fence. I have not seen him do this but my neighbor across the street said he ran down the hill, jumped and glided over the fence on 2 occasions. There is a busy road that he's luckily been able to cross without incident but I...

Thank you for all of your help! I spoke with a lady last week who was interested in the ducklings. I told her about the one's leg injury and she said she was looking for 2 ducks. When she got here, I showed her the 2 outside and then I let her hold the inside ones. We let them run around a...

Everything was OK when I got home, or at least it seemed to be. The one thing that was odd was the 2 inside ducklings were standing outside with my drake and the other female. I didn't put too much thought into it... maybe they were having trouble getting up the ramp into their house so those 2...

Today was the day. I had been exercising them and the injured one was showing no signs of distress. I put the outside to see how they'd handle being in the yard and they took off running to their mother. I watched them for a few hours and it was doing fine. Both the ducks I had inside were a...

A lot better. For the first time since I brought them in, I saw it standing instead of just laying around. There is still swelling but it's minimal at this point. When I soak them later, I may let them swim a little to see how it does. They're getting big and starting to consume enough food and...

I spoke with 2 breeders. One said Penicillin, the other said duramycin. I had duramycin so I went with that. By running, I meant having their legs touch the ground and support their body weight, not actually running. There's a lot of potential hazards in the yard that can hang them up (rocks...

@Miss Lydia thanks for those links. I ended up using the baby aspirin route. I also spoke with a few of the breeders I know and they said that with that type of swelling, I should use antibiotics just to be on the safe side. So I did and I'm seeing results. Over the weekend, its leg began...

Yeah, I hope it's just a sprain also. I'll keep using compresses and soaking it. I read somewhere to use baby aspirin to reduce swelling but I don't have any of those on hand and I'm apprehensive about doing that.

Also, the underside of the foot is uninjured, it just kept squirming when I tried to photograph it