Since this morning’s Flock Friday post didn’t include any pictures of chickens, and I had to go into the chicken run to close some vents for the forthcoming cooler and wetter weather, I took the opportunity to take a bunch of pictures.
And rather than save them till next Friday, I thought I might as well do a bonus Flock Friday post of just chicken pics.
So without additional commentary, enjoy 18 pictures of chickens, some of them looking very scruffy as they continue their molt.
This morning I included a massive GIF summary of 248 pictures from the past week in my Flock Friday post, but it broke loading that post, so I split it out into this separate post.
It might take a while to load, depending on your internet speed, and at one second per picture, will take about four minutes to play. It includes a bunch of pictures you may have seen before in the duckling posts and above, but also many unique ones not previously shown.
Since the GIF is so large (152 MB), it also seems to break the caching server of my site. So here is a direct link to it, instead of displaying it inline. Click that to view it, if you dare.
(Moral of the story: a GIF with hundreds of pictures is probably not a great idea.)
Welcome to the first Flock Friday with all of the ducks together! I have so many duck pictures, there aren’t any chicken ones this time — I’ll make sure to include some next week.
There were 248 pictures this week… so I picked 30 not-previously-published ones to highlight in this post, and included the rest in a big summary GIF at the end, if you’re interested. (Edit: I’ve moved the GIF to a separate post, to avoid loading issues.)
As mentioned in the last daily duckling post yesterday, you can review the duckling posts in chronological order via the tags “ducklings 2020” and “ducklings 2020 again”, if that’s a thing you want to do.
As a brief review, we started the past week with the new ducks still enclosed in the duck house and run:
A week ago I removed the fence, allowing them to join the older ducks in the pond:
Which they did very quickly:
Here’s another shot of their first swim in the pond:
Sassa and the older ducks:
Betty and Sassa, back before she cleaned herself up:
Some ducks by the (currently off) waterfall:
At the edge of the lawn:
The two groups of ducks are becoming more integrated over time, but started out mostly separated:
Betty and the new ducks enjoying leafy treats:
The old position of the food bowl, before I moved it into the duck house:
I added a new island to the pond, and cleaned the fountain; I captured a few pictures while standing in the pond (see the GIF for more, including a couple selfies):
I mucked out the duck house; now that they’re only going in there to eat, I shouldn’t need to do that as often:
The boys:
I discovered that the fake heron that was on the bank went for a swim; someone must have knocked it off. It was supposed to discourage the real heron from visiting the pond, though didn’t really work:
Sven flapping his wings:
Relaxing amongst some grasses:
The boys again:
All the islands occupied:
Betty:
Rooting in the lawn for tasty bugs; unlike chickens, ducks don’t really damage the lawn, just a nice bit of aeration:
In the pond:
Mealworm treats:
One chicken-related thing — ChickenGuard sent me a replacement motor to try to solve the issues I’ve been having with the opener on the new coop. But it arrived with a broken wire! Oops. So I gave up and ordered a new unit. This morning, they said they’ll send a new circuit board as a goodwill gesture, so I’ll have a spare. It’s frustrating when a device doesn’t work, but it is three years old, and I’m generally satisfied with the devices and their customer service. For the convenience of not having to manually open and close the pop doors every day, it’s worth it even if I have to replace them every few years. (And their 3-year warranty is very generous, especially when they send free replacement parts when just outside that period.)
The ducks in the pond, looking towards the hidden path (you can see a peek of the white gazebo; that’s the entrance to the path):
The reverse view, from the hidden path:
All the ducks:
Edit: I’ve moved the GIF to a separate post, as it seemed to cause some loading issues.
