Who watches your ducks when you go out of town?

[Tahai]

I try to keep my travel to just overnights, but I could go away for longer if needed. My best friend lives just up the road, and drives by my house to and from work. Her mom lives nearby, too, and can step in if something comes up and Kim can't make it. Also, I have several 4-H families in the area, if I needed to arrange long term care for some kind of emergency, and Kim was away.

We trade off on animal care - I do her dogs when she's away, and she does my ducks and rabbits. Helps that she likes ducks and rabbits. I'm not overly fond of dogs.

 

[LilMissChz]

I have a Louise. Louise is my retired, 75 year old best friend who loves to house and animal sit. She does a good job. My animals are always well cared for. She follows directions to the letter and dotes on my feathered and furry and finned friends.

 

[galgo98]

Everyone needs a Louise!!

 

[cecosugi]

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.

 

[ambrose]

Interesting to hear all the experiences. I think we'll probably be able to figure something out.

 

[newbyduckmom]

We're still working on who will 'babysit' the ducks if we leave town....so far we haven't left. The doxies can go with us, six ducks cannot! LOL

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

No one, we are three acres of land, 3 breeds of LF ducks, 2 breeds of ornamental ducks, two breeds of chickens, 5 breeds of geese. Too much to expect anyone outside of us to tend to, or remember the feeding blends for.