More ducklings day 1

Welcome to day one of the latest ducklings!

In case you missed it, the TL;DR is that we were concerned about having more boys than girls, which can lead to fighting and other issues, so decided to get seven more female ducklings, so we’ll have a total of five males and ten females — two girls for every boy (reminds me of a song).

Today those new ducklings arrived at our local post office, so I headed out to pick them up.

As usual, I secured them on the front seat in the truck:

The new ducklings in their box, with me about to remove them (photos by my wonderful wife, Jenn):

Notice the other setup in the duck house (since I decided not to do a followup to my previous prep post): the shelf liner flooring (to give traction to wobbly ducklings), the Brinsea EcoGlow heating panel, the lowered heat lamp, the thermometer, and the duckling-sized waterer and feeder. It won’t look as clean for long.

Ducklings in the box, with their gel food and heat pack:

Duck info:

The first one out, the Blue Swedish:

The Buff. I’m not sure what’s on her head; I’ll have to take a closer look at that (I’d guess either gel or poop):

The Khaki Campbell, about to have her bill dipped in the water to introduce the concept of drinking:

One of the Rouens:

Another Rouen; there are four of them, so I’ll skip the other two:

Everyone out and exploring:

The temperature is too low in these pictures, as the pop door was open shortly beforehand. It should be 90°F initially; it raised later:

Drinking:

A couple of hours later, already starting to accumulate poop, and the temperature is at the ideal level under the lamp:

The Buff sitting under the EcoGlow (which could be a bit lower; I forgot how tiny day-old ducklings are!):

I hope you enjoyed seeing brand-new ducklings again! (And did you see and listen to the video?)

I currently plan to continue with the daily posts like I did for the earlier batch, though I may decide to reduce the frequency or simplify in some other way. It’s almost a rerun of the earlier ducklings, though no doubt there will be differences.