The Quack Shack

[shawluvsbirds]

Pandemonium in the Duck-House!

Broody Ducks are crazy! @shawluvsbirds

For whatever reason Buffzilla duck decided that having a nest-mountain in the corner is not good enough and started to move her nest more to the middle of the - hm - let's call it balcony:

That was before i hastily added that piece of wood that you can see acting as a reiling on the picture above. And of course eggs dropped from the upper level into the straw below where Violeta Duck hastily secured them into her own nest!

So now i have two Ducks, sitting on nests, containing eggs in all kind of development stages… - Makes the CCI looking more and more necessary, more on that thing later…
Here is Buffzilla rebuilding her nest:

Of course now her eggs are evenly distibuted everywhere between the corner and the middle of the balcony…
Oh, and by the way while i was securing the make-shift reiling, Violeta Duck happily ate my left leg…

What are we going to do about that when those Ducklings start hatching? They are going to fall off of there and not be able to get back to the nest. I'm considering making a ramp. Or some kind of board to keep the little ones in where the mama's can still fly? Over. And fly back up.
Or maybe I'd just steal all of those eggs for myself when they get close to hatching and brood them.
I have not decided.
I am leaning towards stealing the eggs because I have three more broodies sitting on the ground. That's going to be a lot of little at the same time in my palace.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

oh my goodness i have the same exact thing going on here!

I saw your video this morning! - Any advice? What do you do with abandoned eggs that are still alive and kicking?

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

What are we going to do about that when those Ducklings start hatching? They are going to fall off of there and not be able to get back to the nest. I'm considering making a ramp. Or some kind of board to keep the little ones in where the mama's can still fly? Over. And fly back up.
Or maybe I'd just steal all of those eggs for myself when they get close to hatching and brood them.
I have not decided.
I am leaning towards stealing the eggs because I have three more broodies sitting on the ground. That's going to be a lot of little at the same time in my palace.

I am less concerned about the ducklings falling down, if they do, i can run into the duck house, prevent Violeta Duck from eating my other leg and just put them ducklings back up to momma. Fortunately Buffzilla Duck is turning into Buffkindly Duck. I brought her food and water every day for the last two weeks and she learned to trust me - a tiny bit - as long as i don't touch tiny round things…
My concern is that, once the first ducklings have hatched, Momma duck will leave the nest after 2-3 days, leaving the remaining eggs behind. I cannot even count on how many eggs Buffzilla was sitting and now i have no idea how many of these eggs ended up in Violetas nest.
That whole situation is like a big omlette, just with ducklings…

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

You can eat the cake and keep it!!

If the cake is made of potatoes…

I had a couple of potatoes that had started to sprout. Instead of just breaking off the sprouts and peeling the potatoes, i carefully cut out the sprouts and set them down in a shallow container with water. So far they have continued to grow…

And i ate the potatoes! - Made soup from it.

Here are the sprouts after three days in the water:

I need to plant hem into the ground asap. - And I don't know where…

 

[Canadian Wind]

I am less concerned about the ducklings falling down, if they do, i can run into the duck house, prevent Violeta Duck from eating my other leg and just put them ducklings back up to momma. Fortunately Buffzilla Duck is turning into Buffkindly Duck. I brought her food and water every day for the last two weeks and she learned to trust me - a tiny bit - as long as i don't touch tiny round things…
My concern is that, once the first ducklings have hatched, Momma duck will leave the nest after 2-3 days, leaving the remaining eggs behind. I cannot even count on how many eggs Buffzilla was sitting and now i have no idea how many of these eggs ended up in Violetas nest.
That whole situation is like a big omlette, just with ducklings…

Tell me about it... >.> My girls like to lay in whichever nest happens to be handy. And then there's the one who can't decide *which* nest she wants to sit, which upsets the other that *does* know which one she picked! I have to physically remove the first and put her back in her nest, and then put the second one back on her eggs.

 

[Canadian Wind]

You can eat the cake and keep it!!

If the cake is made of potatoes…

I had a couple of potatoes that had started to sprout. Instead of just breaking off the sprouts and peeling the potatoes, i carefully cut out the sprouts and set them down in a shallow container with water. So far they have continued to grow…

And i ate the potatoes! - Made soup from it.

Here are the sprouts after three days in the water:

I need to plant hem into the ground asap. - And I don't know where…

Considering how full your current potato field is, I don't know where either! Put them in with the strawberries??

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Considering how full your current potato field is, I don't know where either! Put them in with the strawberries??

That would not make sense for potatoes: For the strawberries i just cut the grass in the area, hauled yet another »Monte Caca« up the hill, spreaded the duck-gold out over the grass and planted the strawberry plants. Which means under the 4 inches of soft duck-gold soil there still is the rock-hard yellow west-virginal soil. Those potatoes would grow to pea-size only.
The plan is to fill a couple of Dollar-Store dish-bins with some soil (which i do not have at the moment) and let the potato plants grow up a little larger, then dig up the remainder of the second vegetable bed - where the Peppers were supposed to go - and plant half mature potatoes into that freshly dug up loam. Water every evening and see what will happen.
The Peppers will go together with more tomatoes into the plastic-bag beds, on which i made some progress today:

Those two upright standing cinder-blocks are unstable. They must be replaced with two horizontal oriented ones on top of each other, yet i don't have any more. Maybe the local store is selling them, nearest red or blue store is 30 minutes away in the wrong direction.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Tell me about it... >.> My girls like to lay in whichever nest happens to be handy. And then there's the one who can't decide *which* nest she wants to sit, which upsets the other that *does* know which one she picked! I have to physically remove the first and put her back in her nest, and then put the second one back on her eggs.

This is what's going on for the last two weeks - guess where all the eggs are coming from:

Except for today: She has finished moving her nest and now she is busy rolling all the eggs into the new nest:

 

[Canadian Wind]

This is what's going on for the last two weeks - guess where all the eggs are coming from:

Except for today: She has finished moving her nest and now she is busy rolling all the eggs into the new nest:

She got tired of the freeloader??

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

First experiences with the CCI
(Cheap Chinese Incupator)​

The temperature as per the built-in sensor is stable between 37.5° and 37.7° (99.5 - 99.9F)
How accurate that sensor is, i don't know.

However, this morning i threw one of the sensor modules of my cheap chinese weather-station (CCWS) into the incubator and it was measuring 34.4° (93.9F) the whole day long. In the evening i covered the sensor with a plastic container and since then it shows 35.1° (95.1F).

So the gel-packs are being held at a constant temperature of 37.5° but the air temperature within the incubator is ~2.5° cooler. There is no fan moving the air around in that box.

@Pyxis @Magnolia Ducks @shawluvsbirds - do you have any experience with a still air incubator? Should…

… the eggs just be placed on top of the gel-pack, the warmth will spread from below through the whole egg​

… the eggs be placed on top of the gel-pack and covered with a cotton cloth (there came one with the incubator)​

… something else be done with the eggs.​

As said, i am not planning on hatching eggs from start to the end in that thing, its just in case of an emergency situation, when a duck leaves the nest with the first hatched ducklings and abandons the remaining eggs that are in different stages of development.