Hello all, I don’t own a farm or own my own ducks, but stumbled across this forum when I had questions about the wild ducks that visit my yard. Sara, what an attractive and well maintained site you have here. I don’t know how you do it all so well. I love looking at all of your photos of your ducks and duck stories and feel like you are all good friends already.
My husband and I moved into a house in a small town with a lake across the street in April of this year and I was so excited to find that the ducks would come over to my neighbor and my yards daily, and enjoy very much watching and feeding them. There are wild mallards along with a group of ducks that are bigger and look more ‘domestic looking’ with different colorations. One of those will actually eat from my feed bucket and from my hand.
At the end of August the friendly one made a nest under my neighbors porch and hatched her babies under there. My neighbor warned me that sadly only a couple of them would probably grow up because of predators and such and I did remember seeing some baby ducklings at the lake when we first were moving in and then only saw 3 of those when they were bigger as we were settling in. I only recognize one of those now that it is an adult.
Mama duck of course took her baby ducklings to the lake shortly after being born and my neighbor and I were both so surprised and excited to have her bring them back to visit with us the next day as if she were showing them off. She would visit every morning, along with the other ducks, but was pretty protective of the ducklings keeping them away from the other ducks, but coming right up to my neighbor and I. She comes back other times daily when it is just her and the ducklings and loves to eat and rest in certain spots in our yards. Every time they visit, we count them to be sure they are all there, and happily there are still 10 of them!
They are five weeks old now and are so much fun to watch and see the different colorations coming out in them. There may be a couple of different ‘fathers’ since they are very varied in their looks and sizes (…and judging from what I saw occur in my yard prior to her laying the eggs…..)
I can’t believe how fast ducklings grow! They change practically before your eyes. We are in the central part of New Jersey on the eastern coast of the USA, and have been very blessed with a very warm September so are happy that they are doing so well considering how late in the season that she decided to have them. It is just starting to get a little cooler now, and we had some much needed rain yesterday after a very long dry summer.
I’d love to share some of my photos with you all if you can let me know how to do that, and will certainly keep you all posted on “my” ducks.
Looking forward to getting to know you all!
Dottie