ADVICE**Duckling Appeared In Backyard!

[agingerbrunette]

Congrats you’re now a rehabber

when I did wildlife rehab, our basic principals were to mimic their natural habits as much as possible (hiding food, cutting browse rather than putting food in dishes etc), and to limit human interaction. We weren’t allowed to talk to the animals, they had screens up so they didn’t see us moving about, and they couldn’t associate us with food.



with babies, it was more relaxed except the human interaction part. Baby birds were tube fed silently and then placed back in their enclosures. Ducks were in a pen with water available for dunking. When they were big enough, they had swimming water available at all times for building strength (though we also had cameras on those pens).

basically your goals are to make sure it knows what it needs to survive, and doesn’t associate humans with easy meals, dogs with companionship etc. does that make sense?

Hiding the food sounds great and simple. The no talking part sheesh I may explode not reacting to the butt wiggle. I will def try to set him/her up for success. Not sure how successful I will be in the middle of suburbia but we shall give it a go.

 

[agingerbrunette]

Is there anything particular I should know?

There aren’t any places around me with duck feed so I guess chick starter non medicated, greens, and mealworms?

I read about them needing niacin but I’m not sure at what age they would need that supplement or how long.

 

[Miss Lydia]

They need the supplement till 10 weeks old daily you can use nutritional yeast, brewers yeast or our fav liquid b complex TSC Durvet brand. But if feeding chick starter an feed for chickens they will need the extra niacin. 1 tab of dry to each cup of feed or Half ml of liquid to their feed daily. Make sure it’s not baking yeast. Many have even raised domestic mallards an have had them fly off so I would think your duckling will retain its natural instincts

 

[Texag87]

Stuffed toy and mirror so it does not get lonely.

 

[Teneniel]

Hiding the food sounds great and simple. The no talking part sheesh I may explode not reacting to the butt wiggle. I will def try to set him/her up for success. Not sure how successful I will be in the middle of suburbia but we shall give it a go.

it was hard to do for me even in a room with our director breathing down our necks!

to be fair I ultimately left that place because I found them to be a bit too radical. I do think that limiting positive human contact is pretty universal with rehab but this is your show now.

Stuffed toy and mirror so it does not get lonely.

Yes I forgot, we did have stuffies for single orphaned social animals!

 

[agingerbrunette]

Found a rehabber/sanctuary! As much as I would love to keep Darkwing (that’s his/her name now) Darkwing deserves better than I can provide... such as a flock. We drop him/her off tomorrow and they already have other orphans the same size. In the meantime I’m going to try and provide the best for little Darkwing. Thank you to everyone who took time out to give me recommendations and advice!!

 

[Isaac 0]

Good for you!

 

[Miss Lydia]

That’s so awesome! I know he’ll be happy with his own kind! So sweet of you to care for him in the meantime ❤