Baby Chicks & Ducks

Here are some of are chicks, we got 5 buff orpington and 10 Rhode island reds.

We also got some ducks, there are 5.

Here is Golden.

And here is blueberry (Lily named it)

Lily is holding a chick.

And here are the ducks again a little older.

Our beloved ducks

Well, this is more of a tribute to our ducks which we have had for over a year. We woke up Sunday morning, June 26th and after some family worship time (we have had an extremely busy week with Mia at Bible camp and then our conference and then another week ahead of the boys turn at camp we just needed to stay at home and be quiet as a family), a good late breakfast and a lazy morning, Dave went down to care for the ducks and chickens and let them out to roam. He came back up pretty quickly and asked for everyone to come out on the deck. He told us that something got the ducks in the middle of the night. Only later did we find out that something got 5 of our 15 chickens also. At first we thought it was the rats whom we have been fighting with, but after Dave and Ethan examining further, (Ev was down there at first but he couldn't handle it when they were discarding the bodies, poor guy. He was just looking at them crying. The girls and I were up at the house the whole time) we think that it was a raccoon. All the kids cried over them. And even now when we start talking about them, one of them might say, "stop talking please or I'm going to cry." So here are just some fun memories we have had with them.

Duck Eggs

So we have finally been enjoying our duck eggs for about a month now. We are very grateful to the Chupps for giving their science project to us. They hatched the ducks and then they needed to find a home for them. Our children had been talking about getting some ducks even before we moved out in to the country. So with only 1 month to go before our 4th baby arrived, we moved the ducklings out to our place when they were about 1 1/2 weeks old. They were so cute.

With getting 3 eggs most days now we are pretty sure they are all females. Some days are amazing. Now taking care of the ducks, is part of the boys chores. They love to do it though. Evan feeds them and lets them out to roam the property and Ethan takes care of the bedding and they both bring in the eggs in the morning. Most of the time we let the ducks free range. So they get lots of grass and bugs. One morning we had a surprise.

Yes that is a duck egg next to a normal size chicken egg. Ever since that day we have been getting an egg like this once a week. Dave made eggs this morning for breakfast and which he thought was going to be 2 eggs turned out to be 4. Now that's what we are talking about.