TsiugBoidheach
In the Brooder
- Sep 3, 2022
- 6
- 30
- 36
This is my friend, Coach Bombay (the name she already had), the khaki Campbell
I adopted Coach Bombay 2 weeks ago from a local shelter in the city that I live in.
The shelter had her listed as 6 months old at the time of adoption but they didn’t know her exact age.
I figured since she was abandoned at a shelter for cats and dogs then she must have been an Easter duckling and is maybe closer to 5 months old as of now.
She was listed with a few potential neurological problems but I’ve fixed all of them since they were symptoms of stress and extreme loneliness.
Also, when I first got her she was shedding a lot of small white and light colored feathers. She still sheds some but not much.
So let’s cut to the chase- I have never raised a human imprinted bird before. My grandparents raised chickens on their farm and I got to be a part of that. My dad’s property has a few ducks on it as well. But of course those birds were all raised with a flock since hatching.
I have good reason to believe Coach is imprinted to humans (and no idea if she at least imprinted on what siblings she might have had before being separated).
From the moment I met her she tried doing her “duck talk”, lookin at me and opening her mouth rapidly but making no sound. (This was listed as one of her problems in her chart but I got her to talk with noises she can actually make by softly making the “chook chook chook” chicken calls I was raised with.)
From the moment I brought her home she seemed desperate for human interaction despite how stressed and scared she was. I spent the first few nights sleeping on the floor a respectful distance away from her, and found that she would approach me while I was asleep to nibble at my face.
Fast forward 2 weeks and she’s inseparable from me. I’m not the only human she has around; she certainly almost never alone. She’s friendly with other people and loves pets and being chased around like it’s a game, but it’s me she wants to be near. She quacks loudly if I leave her sight, even if there are other people still there. I’ll usually contact call with her to let her know I’m still around, and if I do actually intend on going somewhere she usually turns her interests elsewhere instead of calling for me.
She hasn’t laid any eggs yet, not that I’m bothered about it. Occasionally I’ll check and make sure she isn’t on her way to laying her first and struggling with it. Which isn’t hard because I’m pretty sure she thinks that she’s getting laid whenever I have to handle her.
I’m no stranger to bird behavior and I’ve put in hours and hours in reading up to get inside the head of a duck lol
She head bobs at me and nobody else almost aggressively, shifting around a lot and presenting her vent to me, though sometimes she buries her head into my armpit, shirt, cleavage, or even shoved her head right into my hand for me to hold.
Sometimes she’ll climb on me and/or bite me. Not her usual nibbles but not hard enough to draw blood, but once she gets a grip she’ll shake her head excitedly.
She also just makes lots of squeaking and honks and even pants when she gets overexcited.
Sadly for her and thankfully for me she probably doesn’t know what duck sex is and is more than satisfied if I give her a hug and some energetic petting, after which she struts around pumping her head at me and kinda lowering her bill to the ground as if there were just the tastiest treats imaginable there.
So that’s my curiosity and bewilderment over teenage duck behavior as well as just the whole thing of raising a bird that was imprinted to humans, as someone who was not one of those humans. Sometimes I watch her and try to figure what she must have been used to as a duckling, or how being abandoned affected her development, and how all that paints her behavior as an adult.
All I know for sure is that she’s been happy and healthy since I’ve been taking care of her. I can definitely say that I’m now very familiar with what pure joy looks like for a duck and I’m happy I could do that for her.
(Also I’m not sure if she knew how to fly before she came into my care but I never saw her make an attempt until she chased after some local pigeons who dared to touch her yard. She made it a game after that. She’d chase the pigeons, they’d fly away, that would startle her into flying back over to me, rinse, repeat haha)
Last edited:
