Saturday, 28th May, evening

It's been a very mixed day, started off with very heavy rain, then went dull and cold and in the afternoon we had sunshine and wind as Julie and Andy brought 4 trailer-loads of horse manure round and I took a couple of photos and a little video of Anke splashing - I'll try and post it here later.

On our early morning trip to Tesco's for shopping we had tried to get a syringe from the chemist there to inject a complete dosage of Flubenvet worming solution into her, but the attendant showed us the empty box, all sold out.  When Julie called a little later to tell us about bringing the manure she promised to try and get a syringe from the chemist in Ashby.

A rollercoaster trip of emotions over Taffy started when I opened the hatch.  She was sitting hidden behind the nest box, her eggs still scattered in the open, she'd quite abandoned her brooding.  She didn't hiss at me, either, which I thought was very sad; after all, protecting her eggs had been her only occupation after losing all her mates, and what's more, she was shivering.

She'd been eating some of the food with Flubenvet and I wasn't overly worried until I went to clean her hut later.  By this time she was back in the nest box and I cleaned just the back half of the hut - and that's when I got the horrors again, there were green and runny droppings, she'd caught it after all.

I called Julie to say not to bother with the syringe, what was the point if she was going to die of DVE after all.  Spent some miserable hours wondering what to do, whether to try the worming solution after all, and then, when John checked on Taffy in the early afternoon, he shouted that she was out of the hut and sitting under it, so she was still mobile.  I went to take my chance to clean out the nest box half of the hut, but when I got there she was back in the hut, at the back.  I took her eggs out and then saw that one of them had been pecked and opened up.  It must have been a jackdaw or other bird for such a small opening, there was a bigger and flatter duck beak mark on one of the other eggs, where I've put a little white arrow in this photo:

Poor Taffy, the bird must have gone right in through the open hatch to attack her egg.

When I finished cleaning I put a pile of straw in and behind the nest box - I'd never seen her trembling before except with rage - and offered her fresh food and water [she actually gave a quiet little hiss as I put the heavy pan with water down, which gave me hope again].  Rice and rice water are supposed to help with diarrhoea, I mixed some wheat and Flubenvet into it as well.

At teatime I went down to the big pond where John had been planting sweetcorn and was about to start on setting the leeks.  We sat down for a while and watched the 5 ducks and drake.  The two new ones, which we decided to call Anke and Lane, are now very happy in the water, and Anke, the dark one who reminds us of our Sweetie so much, is particularly good at kicking up the water when diving under, and all of them are brilliant at catching the flies dancing over the surface.  I'm still hopeful that these 5 have escaped the killer disease, they've shown no sign - just wish Anabelle was still there, my faithful little gardening friend.

A tranquil scene which we enjoyed very much.




More worry was to came at duck bed time with Taffy, though.  Having shut these 5 in I went to close the hatch on Taffy and found her floating on the little pond.  Trying to shush her out didn't work, she just stood in the water at the exit to the hut, looking at me.  Eventually I took a stick and guided her out, she was very able to jump out and patter up the ramp.         
It's the look of her eyes and beak that worried me most, rather like Morf's in this picture: