BeccaV
Songster
Hi everyone. I'm going to try and sum this up quickly. I'm fairly new to this and any advice would be extremely helpful.
We live next to the neighborhood pond in a one street subdivision. Its in the middle of a bunch of canefields and woods. So there are coyotes and raccoons etc.
Over the years, people have dropped off ducks off and we have assumed their care. We feed and water them a couple times a day. They are free range because we could never get them to go into any kind of shelter we provided. We currently have 2 drakes and 2 hens.
Both hens are sitting on eggs, in different areas, about an acre apart. So the two curious drakes only have each other as company.
The hen that I'm most concerned with is in my flower bed in the front yard. Yesterday morning I woke up to five ducklings. She is tending to them but will not get off of the remaining eggs underneath her. I'm a little worried about the two drakes. About a week ago, before they hatched, I caught both drakes in there while she was out feeding. They didn't seem to have done any damage but I ran them off none the less.
Earlier today, they noticed the ducklings for the first time. They both wanted to go into the flower bed but between the mother duck squawking and me squaking, they left them alone. It's been a few hours and they seem to be indifferent. (They're in the pond now.) Still, I'm worried. What if I have to leave for some reason? Or something happens at night?
I don't want to move mother and babies into an enclosure because the mother is still sitting on unhatched eggs. I had an idea to maybe put chicken wire around the flower bed and leave an opening just big enough for the mother to get out and eat. Maybe that would keep the drakes and other predators out? Or should I not interfere and let mother nature take its course?
We live next to the neighborhood pond in a one street subdivision. Its in the middle of a bunch of canefields and woods. So there are coyotes and raccoons etc.
Over the years, people have dropped off ducks off and we have assumed their care. We feed and water them a couple times a day. They are free range because we could never get them to go into any kind of shelter we provided. We currently have 2 drakes and 2 hens.
Both hens are sitting on eggs, in different areas, about an acre apart. So the two curious drakes only have each other as company.
The hen that I'm most concerned with is in my flower bed in the front yard. Yesterday morning I woke up to five ducklings. She is tending to them but will not get off of the remaining eggs underneath her. I'm a little worried about the two drakes. About a week ago, before they hatched, I caught both drakes in there while she was out feeding. They didn't seem to have done any damage but I ran them off none the less.
Earlier today, they noticed the ducklings for the first time. They both wanted to go into the flower bed but between the mother duck squawking and me squaking, they left them alone. It's been a few hours and they seem to be indifferent. (They're in the pond now.) Still, I'm worried. What if I have to leave for some reason? Or something happens at night?
I don't want to move mother and babies into an enclosure because the mother is still sitting on unhatched eggs. I had an idea to maybe put chicken wire around the flower bed and leave an opening just big enough for the mother to get out and eat. Maybe that would keep the drakes and other predators out? Or should I not interfere and let mother nature take its course?
