Duck Daddy and His Six Girls - Day 2.5

It's midnight, and I am up having just changed the towels in the washbasin brooder. I will check on them once again before I go to bed.

This is day two of the adventures of Duck Daddy, and oh boy were these six little girls busy today.

When it comes to drinking water these girls have put a full grown man to shame. Did you get your eight full glasses of water today? Well they did! and more! Now it may have taken all six girls to do it, but when you consider that together they might weigh two pounds - maybe, it is amazing that the quart water feeder had to be filled six times today.

We have been using towels on the bottom of our washbasin brooder, and today we must have changed it five times, and I had to do a load of wash to handle all the wet, dirty ones. It is important that these little girls don't get too wet in their first days, so we have to keep their area dry. Keeping ducks dry? and giving them lots of water? Okay someone tell me - what's wrong with this scenario? This sounds like a near impossible task.

Now Bev had the great idea of using Walgreen's super absorbant "Certainty™" underpads instead of the towels we have been using. Whoops bad idea. She cut them to fit the washbasin, and those little duckies started picking out all the stuffing they could pull on. Then the underpads seeped some kind of absorbency goo, and she was afraid the little ducks might eat that nasty, hyper-exotic, neo-chemical stuff. So much for "certainty."

The little ducks sleep. The little ducks rise. The little ducks get excited, and run around the brooder like crazy. The little ducks eat at a frenetic pace. The little ducks do their best to drink a million times their body weight in water.

When they eat they peck at the starter mash
in the little round trough, and then they shake their heads forward and back really fast as though they are trying to get the stuff down their throats. Then after a few seconds of wild head shaking they go to the water trough. Now if it wasn't for the narrow drinking space of the water trough, they would probably go submarine. You have never seen someone as excited about water as these little girls! Sometimes all six of them are crowded around the water trough at the same time pushing and diving in for water. A bite of mash - heads shake - a drink of water - repeat - repeat again - repeat again....

Then they all fade about the same time and huddle up in a little pile together.

Well, I decided to check on them since they last huddled up together for the evening. That was half an hour ago now.Yikes! Don't they ever settle down for more than a few minutes?

Well, our retired racing greyhound, Holly, doesn't really know they exist yet. The girls are in a back room, and Holly doesn't go there. She must hear them squeaking, but we have finches too, so Holly probably thinks the finches are just being noisy the last two days. Here's Holly with a yogurt cup stuck on her snout. Maybe we need to permanently attach it before she meets the ducks.