About the end of September I realized I only saw Olivia, the female Muscovy duck, at dinner time but not grazing in pasture with Moe, her hubbie. So I looked and found a large nest under the half dog crate I use for small goat kids to sleep under. I hadn't removed it yet cause even tho they don't fit anymore they do like to sleep on top of it now. There is no sense in messing with a duck's nest, and these are big ducks, so I figured, with the temperatures dropping below zero regularly the nest would be a dud anyway, so just let her be. I did wonder why she kept at it, as Muscovies are known to remove bad eggs and abandon a bad nest...
Low and behold, mid October I walk down the barn for breakfast and there is a semi circle of quiet animals standing next to the fenceline... and there they are! A gaggle, or flock, or school, or whatever you call it, of 10 baby ducklings! TEN! They'd dropped thru the fence off a slightly raised concrete slap and stayed there as mommy couldn't get thru the fence and they couldn't get back up the concrete. It was so weird, all those quiet animals (goats? quiet?!), watching the tiny ducklings. So I got the mom, put her in the spare stall, herded the little flock in there with her and they've been growing like weeds. I did give them a heat lamp as within a day or two they outgrew mommy's cover surface :)
You know what I still can't believe? That these little ducklings navigated all those goat feet thru the side stall and Greni's cake plate hooves in the main stall without getting squashed, and that Casper the killer cat had not killed a single one of them! He did do a fake charge when I had just seen them, immediately yelled him off, he pretended he was not interested anyway, and has complete ignored them since. Almost as if he was asking "are these food? or family?" He's a good cat.
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