Friday 20th May 2011

Before I report further on our disasters I'd like to write a big, big THANK YOU to you lovely people who have been writing and telephoning to support us and give us courage, Micha and Pine and Petra on the German side and here Chris and Mike Ashton, Annie, Gerd and Maria, Frances and Alan, and Mel who is sending us back the incubator I lent her with some of their disease-free eggs.  Without your helpful messages it would have been so much harder to carry on - and Frances, that was such a lovely message you wrote me it made me cry.


Having scooped up a collective sample of dropping for vet Rita to examine yesterday morning I cleaned the enclosure with the jet-spray waterhose nozzle as thoroughly as I could, then put down food and the one bucket with the antibiotic.  I opened the hut with trepidation - Fanny was dead, as feared, right in front of the hatch opening where I'd placed her the night before.  There was another body next to her, but I didn't realize it was BBD, our "top dog" drake, until the others had clambered out over the bodies.  Blob was still weak and unsteady on his legs, but Circle and Morf seemed a little better giving me hope.  Taffy was still sprightly but Braith was now poorly.                      

John, defying his pain from gout in his achilles heel, wrapped up the two bodies and we drove to Sutton Bonington again to deliver the "fresh" bodies and droppings samples to vet Rita.  After our morning coffee we went out into the garden [I had already emptied the frog pond and had to clean it as much as I could before re-filling it and John wanted to weed the onion bed], and it's a good job we did because our dark new duck shouted alarm and there was a fox, right near the duck pond.  I chased it off, but we've now got to think about putting up fences again.

I'm writing this before 08.00 in the morning and will go out shortly to see how the situation is today, I'll write more then.

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Coffee break now.

It was a great relief that all 5 quarantined came out of the hut this morning, no more dead.  Blob landed himself smack into the one and only water bowl with the antibiotic but got out when I waved at him.  All 5, I believe, have been drinking out of it.  I was somewhat concerned, though, when walking by to start pumping out the little pond, to see Circle sitting in the bowl.  And when I waved at her she got out very reluctantly and I could see that her underside was horribly green .....  I have some more cleaning and disinfecting to do!

We're still on red alert because of the fox, every time there is protesting quacking down at the duck pond I rush down to see what the upset is, usually the pesky mallards.  I'll either get very fit again or totally exhausted!  It is my own fault for encouraging them in the past by leaving food out for our ducks' convenience, especially when we were out for the day.  I was reminded by Chris [Ashton] the other day when I phoned them for help that wild mallards can bring duck viral enteritis into a flock, and that really is deadly, quote from the IRDA site www.runnerduck.net:

Enteritis

Inflammation and bleeding in the gut can be produced by bacteria or duck viral enteritis. DVE is rare, but will kill most affected birds. Prompt treatment with a vaccine obtainable from Holland, obtained through your vet, is the only solution.
Symptoms: if birds are listless and suffering from pinkish droppings in hot spells in summer, this is more likely to be a bacterial form of enteritis. Watch the wild birds. If blackbirds etc. are ill too, then your ducks do not have DVE.
Cause: the bacterial disease is probably transmitted by the wild bird population.
Treatment: bacterial enteritis is easily treated by using soluble antibiotic powders from the vet, in the drinking water (but you must catch this early.)   No other water should be available.  Move the birds on to clean ground a couple of days after treatment has commenced. Make sure the birds get eight days treatment. Follow the instructions about dosage and withdrawal times.  

Before I go out again I'll put in a few photos from yesterday.  Probably because they're used to coming up for food whenever they feel peckish the now five from the bottom come to the sun lounge quite often and clamour to be fed.  I took a snap from the top window yesterday so as not to disturb them - as soon as I opened the window they were off again.

 

The mallards, unfortunately [after my previous encouragement], think they belong here now and some of them think they own the duck pond and keep our residents off the water at times - and they used to try and drive ours away from the food container.  This morning, when I first went out, I found a pair of them on my freshly cleaned and filled frog pond, the cheek of it!

 Yesterday, while clipping box edging and hedges and trying to untangle the electric fencing from the weeds under the horse fence, I spent a lot of time chasing mallards off the pond and into the field - trouble is, they just turn a couple of circles in the air and land back on the pond or some yards away in the garden.

It's my own fault -