Recent content by Supercow

Yes, they have grit. An entire cob? They will be able to pull the kernels off it? It sounds... optimistic as they don't have sharp beaks like chickens but hey worth a try. The adults are getting individual whole kernels. The 1-month-olds also have some starter crumble but not as their main...

Hey friends - at what age is it OK for ducklings to try eating whole corn kernels? They have been eating grains for a while but not corn and not raw; they got cooked rice, barley, millet... Asking of course for our month old ones, not the ones that have only recently been hatched this past...

Thank you @Miss Lydia! I figure it's true for dogs as it is for humans: "getting old is no fun but it beats the alternative." We hope a good number of the newborn ducks turn out to be ladies so we can reliably have a 10-piece box daily for sale and a couple eggs more for our use. Maybe we'll...

Final duckling report. Not super final because the young ones still have to make it through the first couple of weeks but here goes. - The one in egg #9 is sadly dead, all tangled up and wrapped, similar to what happened to the majority in the first round - The one in egg #8 had to be helped a...

One more duckling appeared by morning (it's 7:42 AM here). We still hear peeping from the remaining eggs and will check them individually and maybe enlarge the holes if we see that some are struggling to get out. Yesterday's four look like they gained +50% in size overnight :)They are now...

Here we go. 4 fluffies now going in a grape barrel under a heat plate. 5 eggs remain, 4 have pipped, 1 has not and we're not hearing anything from it (peeping, pecking, bumping around) unlike the others. If we manage to get +4 we'll be very happy. But of course it would be a great joy to have...

#3 is out of the shell... hopefully we can keep up the good results! Is it customary for the already hatched ducklings to "groom" the one that's trying to pull itself out of the shell? (Are they just going "oh look food"?)

Picked a bit early because we noticed that birds are aware of this tree. But far from bad :)

And here is the new setup for the first-generation ducklings. For safety they are moved to the garage in their big wooden apple crate overnight. They are now 4 weeks old, their wings have grown noticeably (not such penguins anymore), we can see the stems of the large feathers and their breasts...

9 eggs in the machine ready to hatch any day now. Heard peeping at night, was surprised to find no ducklings in the morning. Found 5 eggs with attempts at breaking the (very hard) shells. Made emergency holes (couple of mm just to let the air flow and encourage more attempts). Ducklings peeping...

All three of those (dock, pigweed, borage) are different plants. (But all are edible.)

Super early. The main problem is that temperatures in the last decade or so begin to rise much earlier than they used to; but at the same time frost events still happen. We were just lucky in that the late frost we had after hitting +30 C was a modest one (-2 C) so most of the fruit survived...

What did we do in the garden today? Well it's an orchard, but... we picked ripe sweet cherries and even mulberries. WHAT. That's about a month early. It's a really unusual year. Had +30 C (85 F) in mid-April (probably earliest ever) followed by frost. Frost events are normal for that time but...