bamachick86
In the Brooder
I had to share this hilarious story. This day has been an emotional roller coaster as a duck mom. Our ducks have been enjoying free ranging on our pond and surrounding land for a few months now with no issues, no signs of predators... until yesterday morning. We awoke to our poor little black cayuga Penelope missing skin and feathers on the back of her neck. Miraculously whatever got a hold of her didn't puncture the flesh, but it stripped her neck bare. She's recovering nicely in the garage now. We were nervous about whatever this was getting to our other ducks, but they refuse to come back inside the coop at night, so we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. We awoke this morning to our blue cayuga, Pickles, missing. Absolutely no sign of her, alive or dead. As I was attempting to lure the last duck into the coop for protection just minutes ago, who do I see waddling down our gravel path toward the coop but Pickles herself? This is over 12 hours since the last Pickles sighting, mind you. She had apparently been hunkered down somewhere to make sure nothing could find her, not even us.
I'm still trying to figure what could've gotten to Penelope and what could've scared Pickles off for so long. I considered she could've been hurt by mating from our drake but I don't think I've ever seen him go after her, and he's usually not too aggressive (except when he gets around the chickens, they need to watch out). Penelope seems to be doing fairly well, considering her situation. She's still pretty active and alert, hanging out in the crate in the garage with some hay and electrolyte water and feed. I've been spraying some poultry spray on the wound all week but started using Neosporin today to help speed up the healing process. Sadly in our wrangling efforts to get all the ducks in the coop one of our brand new golden 300 hybrids ran off into the woods--she made an appearance later that afternoon but my blasted rooster chased her off and I haven't seen her since 
We aren't letting those guys out of that pen for the foreseeable future.
