ElisaTheDuck
Hatching
To make a long story short, I found a young mallard duckling alone in a polluted area of water on a construction site. I waited for the mother and even tried looking for one, but I didn't find her. Anyway, I brought the duckling home and searched up all sorts of information about mallards and their needs, so I have him in a box with a lamp and plenty of water. For the food, I haven't been able to go out and get the necessary feed yet, so I have been feeding him lettuce and mashed rabbit pellets in a water mixture. For the first day, he mostly spent it trying to hide and not eating, then the morning of the second day, I caught him eating from the bowl I left in the box. He spent a lot of that day sleeping for short bits, then running around like normal ducklings do. But today, he wouldn't eat or drink and he spent an abnormal amount of time sleeping, not even moving when I tried to get him to swim in my bathtub. Later, I brought him outside and set him down on the grass, where he started snapping at passing flies and eating ants. Since he appeared hungry for insects, I found more ants and several worms and he ate them along with some water that I held for him. He ate what seemed to me like an excess of them, then he went back to sleep. I just want to know how much he should be eating and sleeping per day, because he seems like he's doing either too much or too little of each at intervals. I wouldn't say he was more than a couple of days old when I found him. Thanks for whatever help you can give me!
