Muscovy Ducks

If you've been following our story, you know that the garden serves as home to 3 Muscovy ducks, Dougall, Donna, and Daisy. These three help keep the number of slugs down. They are not perfect slug controllers, but they help.

Having one boy and two girls, the inevitable happened --- eggs.....fertile eggs. The first time around, the little ducklings didn't survive. We weren't aware until too late that Donna and Daisy didn't know how to keep them warm. 

Donna promptly created another nest, laying a few eggs before settling down to incubate them. After 35 days, a magical little duckling hatched while the volunteers were working in the garden. When we arrived, there were just eggs. Two hours later, little peeping announced the fact that Donna now had a fuzzy little baby. 

Little yellow and brown duckling snuggles up to Donna.

This time around Donna is being very protective. She won't let curious Daisy come too close. We have hopes that Donna will prove to be a better mama this time. We could of course take the baby away and hand raise it. But that just isn't going to work out right now, so Mother Nature has to do it herself.