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We got new ducklings in the mail yesterday. At first I didn't post about it, because I had to get up before 7:30am to pick them up (leaving me about 3 or 4 hours sleep shy of normal), then we were very busy with "Squeeee! Babies!", then normal daily routine (C had shuffleboard and karate, and I had a soup to prepare since we wouldn't be home at dinner time). Plus, we had to coordinate with the other two 4-H families taking a pair of ducks each (we went in on a 10 duckling shipment to make the price lower per bird, by reaching a minimum order value and the minimum bird order where you don't get charged extra to ship them).
For those keeping track, that means 10 minus 4 equals 6 ducklings left for us (the difference in price between 9 ducks and 10 was less than 4 dollars thanks to that aforementioned minimum bird order without extra charges thing, so we just went with the 10th, even though we really only wanted 5 - one for each family member).
Here are the five we ended up with by late last night. Yeah, five, thus the other reason I felt like putting off writing about this. One of the ducklings fell ill and died last night. We don't know what was wrong with her and all the others are fine, as far as we can tell.
When I came back from C's karate I notice one was looking a little off (a fawn and white runner duck I had been planning to give to one of the 4-h kids, good thing that didn't happen till after I came home). We swapped out the lethargic one for a perkier one to give to JD (I certainly didn't want to give him a broken bird). H got a heat pad out to try to warm up the sick one. That's when we realized she may be pooping blood. S took charge of the sick bird while H and I dropped the two extra fawn and white runner ducks off with the 4-H kid (all his siblings were there to greet us and they were all super excited to get ducklings, so H and I didn't feel too bad about leaving one of the ones we thought would be ours with them). When we got back, H took over holding the bird from S (and S had to change to get yet more bloody poop off of her pants), then within the hour the duckling died in H's arms. She didn't even have a name, since she wasn't originally going to be ours. The one that went to JD was going to be M's, instead he got the one I was going to call Lucifer, and he named her Fang.
As hard as that was, the Metzer folks were great. This morning I called and they refunded the price of the duckling and grow gel shipped with her (they would have replaced her if I preferred, but we never really wanted six birds to begin with and the thought of waiting two extra days for a single duckling, then trying to mix an extra bird into our little established flock, seemed way too stressful to me).
This whole post was long and sad, when it should have been full of squee inducing duckling pictures. Yesterday was hard.
For those keeping track, that means 10 minus 4 equals 6 ducklings left for us (the difference in price between 9 ducks and 10 was less than 4 dollars thanks to that aforementioned minimum bird order without extra charges thing, so we just went with the 10th, even though we really only wanted 5 - one for each family member).
Here are the five we ended up with by late last night. Yeah, five, thus the other reason I felt like putting off writing about this. One of the ducklings fell ill and died last night. We don't know what was wrong with her and all the others are fine, as far as we can tell.
When I came back from C's karate I notice one was looking a little off (a fawn and white runner duck I had been planning to give to one of the 4-h kids, good thing that didn't happen till after I came home). We swapped out the lethargic one for a perkier one to give to JD (I certainly didn't want to give him a broken bird). H got a heat pad out to try to warm up the sick one. That's when we realized she may be pooping blood. S took charge of the sick bird while H and I dropped the two extra fawn and white runner ducks off with the 4-H kid (all his siblings were there to greet us and they were all super excited to get ducklings, so H and I didn't feel too bad about leaving one of the ones we thought would be ours with them). When we got back, H took over holding the bird from S (and S had to change to get yet more bloody poop off of her pants), then within the hour the duckling died in H's arms. She didn't even have a name, since she wasn't originally going to be ours. The one that went to JD was going to be M's, instead he got the one I was going to call Lucifer, and he named her Fang.
As hard as that was, the Metzer folks were great. This morning I called and they refunded the price of the duckling and grow gel shipped with her (they would have replaced her if I preferred, but we never really wanted six birds to begin with and the thought of waiting two extra days for a single duckling, then trying to mix an extra bird into our little established flock, seemed way too stressful to me).
This whole post was long and sad, when it should have been full of squee inducing duckling pictures. Yesterday was hard.
