It’s been a whole week since we mentioned the ducklings. They are growing so fast and keeping us delightfully entertained with their behaviour. The latest trick is to use the drinkers as swimming pools, as this little chap(ess) is demonstrating so beautifully! Five minutes before we took this photo there were three of them in there whilst a fourth and Berry both drank from it at the same time!! Our little yellow chap is still going strong – s/he is either off doing his/her own thing or snuggled right in the middle of the rest of her siblings, making the most of the heat from all sides.
And we still have Pear sitting on her eggs, helped by our Red Leghorn cross – interestingly, it was the Red Leghorn cross who nest-shared last time, and not successfully - we ended up with just three hatching. This time we are more hopeful because the nest sharing is much calmer and last time we looked and candled some of the eggs, all those we checked were growing well. They still have over two weeks to go but are now over half way through their incubation!!!
And despite deciding that Pear’s clutch should be our last hatching for the year, we seemed to have ‘allowed’ Victoria, our bronze turkey, to start sitting on ten of her eggs. She has laid them in the shelter of our one of our wind-breaks which is not a bad place to be as she is fairly hidden and even when it rains, she stays quite dry BUT of course if we do suddenly start to get foxes prowling, she is rather vulnerable…. (so fingers crossed…)