Ducklings Commence Drilling Behavior
We got some hatchlings of the duck variety recently and they are growing very fast. The black one you see here in this video is a Cayuga and the brown ones are Khaki Campbell. Two weeks ago their wings were little stubs, but now they have grown out significantly. They’ve also started mixing it up with the adult hens so they are not afraid to venture out of the nursery area into the outdoor aviary.
Here you can see the ducklings “drilling” in the mud. That’s what it’s called when ducks sift through muddy water in search of food bits and bugs. This gets messy because when they want a drink of “clean” water they discharge a lot of mud into the clean water so the water receptacles have to be dumped out and freshened up twice a day.
The young ones have also started to wade into the small water tub along with the older ones. This is a great sign that they are maturing well and getting used to their surroundings. In addition to the water tub, we flood part of the aviary with water to give them a nice muddy look to splash around in. That’s where they like to hang out for a good part of the day.
The quaking you hear in the video is coming from the adult hens, not the ducklings. The ducklings are still just making “peep” sounds. They’ll be a full-on quacking soon enough! We are not sure yet whether the ducklings are male or female. We’ll know in four or five months when and if they start laying eggs…
