Saturday morning, 21.5.2011

There is bright sunshine out there at quarter to six in the morning, this has GOT to be a better day and hopefully the start of a happier time again with our ducks.

Yesterday we spent all day doing what we could for the survival of our remaining ducks.  John was on fox watch near the big duck pond, and just as well, he saw the fox again just the other side of our ditch.  We're sure it's a vixen, trying to feed her growing young.

I tackled the duck hut with hot vinegar water and scrubbed the little pond within an inch of its life:

In the photo above the arrow points to Blob, Braith and Circle who had been trying to keep out of the way of my cleaning activities, here's a closer picture of them:

I could see these three moving to various places within the enclosure while I was busy, but then I suddenly realized I hadn't seen Taffy for a while ....................  a very thorough search found her, sitting behind a roll of barbed wire - on a couple of eggs!

I took the photo of her two eggs this morning [it's lunchtime now].  Taffy was so reluctant to leave her nest last night, I think she only went in the end because Blob and Braith had already gone in there on their own.  I put a woolly hat on the eggs overnight in case she wanted to reprise her sitting this morning and hoped that no thief would make off with her eggs overnight - yes, she's been sitting on them again most of the morning.  I'm pleased for Taffy.  I don't expect anything to hatch out of them, Annie, because she's always in the hut overnight, but it does give her an occupation while the other two are still very weak and just sit around  -  although they did have a swim first thing in the newly cleaned pond.  Unfortunately there were still green stains in the hut this morning, so I'll have to clean both that and the pond again when this is over, 2 more days of the antibiotic application.

I mentioned just two others above apart from Taffy, I was heartbroken yet again when I found Circle near to death at duck bed time last night.  [I'm sorry, Micha, I know she was your favourite and yesterday morning I'd been full of hope for her.]  She had no strength left, her underside was green, and there looked to be a discharge from her eye - one of the symptoms of the Pasteurella which I hadn't noticed before in the others who died.  We put her into a box in the shed, there seemed no point in putting her into the hut with the others.

That's six out of the group of nine that died within a week, it is heart-rending to see our lively ducks and drakes in such a state.  I'm hoping fervently yet again that Blob and Braith will pull through and that Taffy  doesn't catch it.                   There had been news from the laboratory given to vet Craig Hunt on Thursday.  He had called us at 4 pm with the message that he'd heard from VLA, wanted to speak with us, and that vaccination might be needed.  We only found that message at 6 pm yesterday, must have missed his call on Thursday when we were out on fox watch.  I did call Chine House right away to find out more and to apologize, but Craig Hunt had left for the weekend and we'll have to wait until Monday.