Just a quick update to mention that all but two of our eggs have hatched into beautiful baby boys and girls (save for the one that didn't make it out of the shell alive). She still insists on sitting on the last two eggs, so I just left them there for now. I'm not sure if it is possible that the last two can hatch, but I decided to leave them there rather than pull them out and mess around with them.
I'm guessing there are 10-12 babies in there, but they are all but invisible under mommy's feathers so it's hard to tell. She doesn't have any desire at all to have me in there, but the five-finger oven mitt has helped a great deal.
(Until my wife asked where it was tonight - oops!) Hopefully in the next day or so it will warm up a little and they will start venturing out.
I did hold one of the ducklings to show my wife, who has always been a bit....tepid?....with my chicken (now duck) hobby. (She's actually in the other room showing our daughter a few pics right now
) Anyhow, it was so cute! Walking back to the run, the little guy/girl tried to jump out of my hands, but tragedy was averted. What amazed me was that when I put it down, it darted about 18" to mommy's protection in about 1/2 a second. Very fast indeed!
Anyhow, I'll try to remember my photobucket account name/password so that I can upload a few pics.
-Dave
