We went camping last weekend, and took the baby turkeys with us. Peep Peep Peep, that's all we heard. Drove us nuts, but I didn't have to worry about them. All I had to do was hold them...all the time.
The 5 ducks, however, could not go with us. While we were gone, one daughter checked on them at night, and the other daughter lives in an apartment in the barn, so she checked on them in the morning. That way it wasn't too much of a burden on one person.
Two years ago, we took all the kids on a cruise. Our dogs couldn't go, of course, so we hired a teenage boy to stay at the house. His mom owns the local grooming and dog food shop, so he's been around dogs all his life. We knew that if he messed up, his momma would kick his youknowwhat.
This year when we took the kids to Vegas, we hired a similar age boy of a family we know very well. Same scenario.
I have also looked into a dog service, that comes to your house a set number of times while you are gone. We decided against it because our dogs are used to more attention than that. They sleep on the bed with us, and they are never alone for 8 hours. We have a 9 year old lab that is on all sorts of meds for arthritis (as well as shots, accupuncture and chiropractic treatments, but that's another story), so she needs special care if we aren't there. However, if it didn't involve our dogs, we would certainly have hired her to check on the chickens. They'll scoop litterboxes, so I can't see how much different it would be to check my ducks.
Another place to look is your local vet. They may know someone that would be suitable, or perhaps one of their vet techs. Just because they normally handle dogs, cats, and horses doesn't mean they wouldn't check on chickens and ducks.
If you happen to have a local college with a vet tech program, that's another place to call.
