Our creek flooded and turned the duck pasture into a big lake.
We thought they were gone for good when they decided to stop sleeping in the coop.
They showed up a few days later, but still wouldn’t go in the coop.
Today I was able to lure them back to the front door of the coop with some feed. The plan is to keep luring them back with the hope that they’ll decide to sleep in the coop tonight.
We miss our duck eggs.
After reading Angie’s comment on Mark’s lament about our ducks’ lack of eggs, I immediately filled up a bucket with water to treat our flock. Angie was totally right — our waterfowl had been cooped up indoors with no way to clean their feathers for weeks, and if they felt as dingy as they looked, chances were they needed the pick-me-up.
But our flock had other things on their minds. Like the raging snow-melt-filled creek that was finally sufficient to tempt them out across the snow. Clean and happy, our ducks finally gave us the first egg in weeks. Here’s hoping they soon return to the four eggs a day we’d been enjoying pre-snow!
It’s been over a week since our flock of ducks and chickens has had a chance to forage outside.
The ducks had been laying at a nice regular rate, but that stopped when they started being cooped up all day.
I suspect it’s the stress of spending too much time with the chickens that’s caused the slow down. Maybe a bigger coop or more privacy from the chickens would yield better results?