Birds of a different feather

Our hen Junebug is the proud mama of a flock of ducklings!

Junebug and some of her adopted babies.

She had gone broody this spring, meaning she was laying on eggs all day trying to hatch out some chicks. The poor dumb bird doesn’t realize that we don’t have a rooster and therefore none of those eggs could become anything but breakfast. Having a broody hen isn’t really a good thing, because she protects the eggs and pecks at us when we try to collect them, and eventually she stops laying new eggs altogether. But we were able to put Junebug’s broodiness to good use: Mike’s mom brought over a pile of recently laid ducks eggs that her friend had obtained. The mother duck had been chased off my a dog and abandoned them. We slipped them underneath Junebug to see if they would hatch, and two days later, we had six cute little ducklings living in the coop! There’s actually one chick in the mix, too. A (fertilized) chicken egg got mixed in somewhere along the duck eggs’ journey. 

One of the bravest ducklings, venturing out of his own to get some grub.

Sadly, there were eight ducklings originally, but it appears that Junebug accidentally suffocated two of them. The nest box is small, and she’s inexperienced at being a mother. We’re really hoping that there are no more casualties.

We’ll keep the ducklings with the chickens and let Junebug raise them until they’re adults. Mike’s mom has done this before, and she said that one day when the ducks are grown up, they all just fly away. But sometimes they stop by again the following year on their migration path.