Mom hatches ducklings in the pasture. Can I save them?

see that duck right there she's got a secret going on so what is that secret let me show you see she's out here in the middle of our pasture all the way from all the other birds that we have on our farm you can see our chickens right there that's the goose house and that right there is our duck house but she's been out here for quite some time keeping over a secret and just this morning i discovered her secret let me show you what her secret is hey how's it going there mama have to see what's underneath you can you see him she's got a couple of ducklings hanging out underneath her see she's been out here a little bit over a month [Music] leaving this clutch of eggs and just miraculously in the last day or so looks like they've hatched toby our guard dog i guess he's been keeping her safe and keeping watch and keeping the predators away and so yeah i was just out here doing my little pasture walk and i saw her for the first time it looks like she's got five baby ducklings isn't that incredible i guess the real question is what am i gonna do about her i'm gonna try to solve that one in today's video release the quack [Laughter] how you doing there old gal jemima [Music] before winter i will replace this duck ramp i know a lot of you guys have been getting annoyed by it i think it works fine and so i'm not rushing to tackle a project i don't have to immediately tackle but i will try to change it out before winter rise and shine [Music] good morning so as it pertains to this mother duck and her ducklings i'm kind of conflicted on what i need to do here on our farm we've only had one duckling ever be hatched by their mothers naturally and survive to adulthood generally speaking our ducks have not had a degree of success when it comes to raising babies there was my failed hatching experiment of 2019 where you know i had several mother ducks sitting on several clutches of eggs and i only ended up producing three ducklings and again of those ducklings only one survived to adulthood so last year generic duck who's the duck who's sitting on the nest out there back in the fall she actually went off and went into hiding for several weeks and she tried to hatch a clutch of eggs but they never seemed to produce any babies i don't really know if the eggs just never hatched or the babies never survived but regardless by the end of the season last year she was not a mother or at least a mother of ducks that have hatched she is actually the mother of ron swanson in case you're curious you know actually generic duck's sister jerk duck is missing right now and she's somewhere out here in the pasture my guess is that she's also sitting on a clutch of eggs and so this idea of particularly the cayuga ducks trying to hatch their own eggs isn't crazy and i'm really proud of her the fact that she ended up with five healthy babies and even as i'm watching those babies not even all five of them are her own you can tell other ducks were laying eggs in her nest because while a few of them are black like a cayuga which would suggest that she's the mother there's a couple babies in that batch that look like purebred khaki campbells and so that would suggest that they are not her children and i really do feel like gosh she did the hard work of sitting on those eggs and incubating them i should really give her the opportunity to raise those ducklings but then there's a much more rational part of me saying that i should really raise them with these young runner ducks that i have here in the brooder house in case you guys were wondering these are about i don't know nine day old 10 day old runner ducklings you can see they're much bigger than those little ones out in the pasture i could in theory actually introduce them into this brooder they might get picked on a little bit but i think they'd be fine and healthy and they'd end up becoming a part of the runner flock so that's definitely one option i have for how i could raise them but again back to that idea that the mother cayuga duck generic duck did all the hard work and it would be heartbreaking for her to rip her babies away from her i'm really not sure if that's the right thing to do hey there little weird chickens our little bantam mom has done a really good job raising these three chicks and so far they look to be pretty happy and healthy so part of me does believe that there's actually an advantage to having the mothers raise the babies that they hatch i've got these silkies actually in this protected enclosure for a couple of reasons one of them is so that they don't get beaten up by the other birds on our farm but the other reality is it gives me the opportunity to let them wander and be with their parents and they still remain relatively protected inside this little area this one here on the far left definitely looks like a baby rooster or a cockrell she looks like a poet and i think she looks like a pulit as well so it looks like i got two females and one male i probably need to ultimately find some homes for them so if anyone's interested in buying a couple baby chicks or bullets i should say that are some sort of silky bantam coaching satin type cross that should have some pretty interesting coloring hit me up uh these guys are doing really well and they're growing but now all of this being said i do have the memory of the incident that happened with the little wild gosling still etched in my mind and that has me thinking about removing the babies too you know if you missed that episode or two here at goldshaw farm you'll know that over the last couple of videos we had this gosling that was hatched naturally by the mother it started to grow really well and do very good but then one day it mysteriously vanished i don't know what took it out and why it expired and where it went to but i do know just having that little baby wandering our farm like that makes it much harder for it to survive get out of there you vultures i'm gonna feed everybody out you go [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] and the honest truth is we also have some farm predators wandering around here that could put those little ducklings at risk our barn cat pablo barn cat generally doesn't attack the adult birds and he also seems to steer clear of the baby goslings if they're with a mother but i definitely wouldn't put it past him to try to go after one of those ducklings and ducks are just not nearly as protective mothers as geese and as i've been watching pablo out in the pasture this morning very much watching and stalking that mother duck it legit has me worried toby dog does a tremendous job of fending off most of those predators but pablo barncat's his best friend and i think he'd have a hard time keeping pablo away from the little baby birds and then finally the last worry i have about mother duck and her little ducklings is that right now on the farm we're actually going through a little bit of a cold spell it was about 40 degrees overnight it was raining yesterday it's gonna rain all day today all day tomorrow and then all day that next day so we're gonna have just a ton of rain and while the mother duck can keep her little ducklings generally pretty warm four straight days of downpours and cool temps is not a recipe for success when you have two day old ducklings i mean i really don't know what to do there toby dog so on the one hand i want mother duck to be able to raise up those babies because she worked hard for him but then on the other hand i don't want those ducklings to die you know buddy but in my short farming career i've often learned that whenever you feel like you only have two choices you should always challenge that assumption because maybe there's a third way and that third way is the better way you know those baby ducklings seem like they're old enough now to walk around a little bit and so what i think i might try to do is herd mother duck up through the pasture let him maybe even go for a little dip and swim in our pond and then keep driving them further and further up until i can actually get them to this chicken tractor that i have over here it's a ridiculously big chicken tractor it was something that i built last year with the idea of having it house a whole bunch of geese but what i'm finding is it's too big to move around so far this year it's come in handy as a quarantine station as well as a little animal hospital for when i need to keep a bird away from the rest of the flock and so i think it might make just the perfect home for these little ducklings it's not like i'm gonna be able to keep them in there forever but i just want to give mother duck a safe predator protected space where she can get out of the rain and keep her babies warm and raise them up for at least a couple of weeks so they get bigger and can be out there on their own this isn't the perfect house for him but i will add some food and some water and bring some hay in so that she can make a nest if she'd like to it does look like there's a gap in the back that the babies can slip out of but the cool thing is the babies aren't going to run away from the mom very much so i think she should be okay like that [Music] huh [Music] so while she's not using the hay that i just put down for her you can definitely see that she's able to keep her babies in this corner here and keep them warm you know those babies are at risk of probably slipping out underneath the gap in the back there but they won't stray too far from mom i don't think i might also put in some effort to close that gap in later today and yeah you can see actually pretty good here so you can see the three black ones on the right they are probably khaki campbell cayuga crosses and then you have the two brown ones or dark brown ones uh one in the foreground there and there's another one hiding behind her those are the ones that are probably purebred khaki campbell another reason why i actually like this idea of keeping them a little bit protected as they're in their early days what i'm finding is ducklings or goslings that are raised naturally out in the wild don't grow nearly as well or as healthy as the ones that i brewed because oftentimes they don't have access to the same nutrition the way i have them set up here they can have plenty of duck food and access to plenty of water but also not be competing with the rest of the farm for resources and they get to stay with their mom she's doing really good as a mother duck i gotta say i'm quite impressed [Music] two [Music] ah [Music] wow [Music] it's not going to keep the predators out but then realistically i've got this clever fella to keep the predators away hey toby dog are you gonna keep watch yes you are you know as i continue to figure out different ways to raise these baby birds i'm realizing that this hybrid approach of having a mom in a protected space might be the best option and it could be something i expand upon in the future but for right now i'm gonna just let mother duck here raise up her little ones and and see how they do over the next couple of weeks as usual if you guys have thoughts comments or suggestions leave them down below and i also suggest if you're interested in this topic looking at this video right here which is all about a mother duck trying to raise her ducklings naturally i bet you if you watch this video you're gonna definitely get a sense of why i don't like letting the moms just raise their ducklings in the natural wild because it might not end well

Channel: Gold Shaw Farm

Views: 218,143

Keywords: gold shaw farm, duck farm, goose farm, vermont farm, duck chronicles, raising ducks, homestead vlog, family vlog, baby ducks, brooding ducklings, raising ducklings, hatching ducklings, hatching ducks, khaki campbell ducks, backyard farming, duckling duck, raising ducks for eggs, raising ducks for beginners, farm vlog, hatching ducklings naturally, natural duck hatching

Id: gYB0BWl2R34

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021