A few weeks ago we took in a duck that had somehow lost it’s way from it’s mother and was being raised by a family during summer vacation from school. When school was starting and the duck was quite a bit bigger they realized they could no longer care for it and asked if we would take it.
Mrs. Waddles is a mallard duck. She did not have the skills to survive on her own as the little girl who was “mothering” her treated her as you would a puppy. It would not have been fair to try and let her go in the wild without the natural instincts she should have. So we took her in as we have raised mallards on our ranch before.
Over the past 2 weeks we have been teaching her how to be a duck. She has her own little pen which is attached to the chicken and goat pasture. Every day we use the hose and make a little make shift “marsh” so she will learn how to forage for food, bugs and worms as she would in the wild. She loves being squirted with the hose and she is flapping her wings which is what she should be doing to build strength to eventually fly. See video on my Facebook page here
Next week we will take her back to our pond and let her swim and work further on her skills in a larger setting. Hopefully before the middle of October she will be teaching herself how to fly and eventually will leave our home in search of her own kind.
You can see my original post and how much she’s grown here…A duck is a duck
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