Flock Friday for January 8

How about some pictures of chickens and ducks to distract from the chaos of the world? Oh, and some bonus cats.

Only three chicken pictures this week. Here are a couple roosting on top of the metal food storage bin in the old coop:

Chickens

Enjoying some treats in their run:

Chickens

Chickens

The ducks over by the edge of the flowerbeds, with the white gazebo in the background:

Ducks

Heading over to the back lawn, past the pond deck:

Ducks

Night ducks:

Night ducks

On the back lawn, with the brown gazebo and new chicken coop in the background:

Ducks

As mentioned on my personal blog, I noticed that Sassa, the gimpy duck, is actually a boy:

Sassa

So we need to come up with a male Swedish name starting with “S”. Got a bunch of suggestions via Micro.blog already, but if you have any ideas, let me know.

Along with a similar discovery last week, that means that of the six ducklings from the second batch last year, which were supposed to be all female, two were male, and four female. Which brings our totals to five males and seven females… not an ideal ratio at all. I hope that won’t be a problem in Spring when they start mating. Male ducks can be, shall we say, rather enthusiastic in their endeavors.

A couple more pictures of the ducks on the back lawn:

Ducks

Ducks

Yesterday when I went to the pond, I noticed the ducks on the back corner, and two cats off to the right:

Ducks and cats

Here’s a closer look at the two cats; a black one (hard to see) and the gray Paladout:

Two cats

Closer:

Two cats

The ducks sleeping on the bank:

Ducks

I went around that side for a closer look; here several of the ducks are tilting their heads to look at me (but Betty is sleeping by the seedling):

Ducks

I went behind the pond, and the black cat scampered through the fence (I’m pretty sure both living on that neighboring property):

Cat

Paladout is more used to me, and just watched from the top of the bank:

Cat

I wasn’t too worried that the cats would attack the ducks; ducks are too big for cats to want to tackle, unless desperate.