New House Guests

It was a cold morning this morning and when I fed the horse and sheep, I could hear weak peeping noises from a duck's nest. The duck was nowhere to be found (perhaps motherhood didn't live up to her expectations), and some little lifeless duckling bodies were lying huddled over the eggs in the cold. One of the eggs was peeping weakly. It felt cold. I picked it up, and could hear more weak peeping from the nest. Another egg with a tiny hole chipped in it. I put them both in my pocket, and checked the other cold eggs. A tiny little duck bill protruded from one, not moving.

I brought the eggs inside and tried warming them with a hair dryer which was not exactly optimally temperature controlled. I didn't want to take the chance of cooking them in the shell, so I peeled the shell and dried them. I briefly abandoned them to locate and unpack a Hova-Bator incubator that had been bought for the daughter's poultry @ 10 years previously, but the box had never been opened. I brought it in from where it had been stored and assembled it, periodically warming the little ducklings with a hair dryer.

The incubator temperature controls works great after all that time! Now they are in the incubator with the controls set @ 100 degrees. I'll probably leave them in there the rest of the day before moving them to a box with a heat lamp so they can get their first meal.