"Bloomin'" ducks!

The 5 new boys looked unharmed by their night in the garage, I let them out after releasing the 3 from the bottom but and the lot from the duck shed.  Apart from Billie-Jean, who's been spending many nights with the 13 in the shed, I left all the other girls from the top hut in the old chicken enclosure for company, i.e. GertieII,Winnie, Dash and Vera, after giving Honey her medicine.  We could see that one of the new boys from that hut, the one that looks like Tuts, was frequently running up to the enclosure and trying his best to get in ... and all of a sudden he was in there, John shouted me - a gap in the fencing, now secured.

We managed to hold off Honey and the three others while Winnie and her beau ran out of the gate we opened for them, they're obviously very fond of each other [which makes me sad for Winnie 'cause her fellow is due to be taken away tomorrow, Monday].

In the afternoon John emptied all three huts for me and I put in the fresh bedding.  This caused a bit of panic among the 4 girls in the enclosure whom I'd snapped earlier from a distance when they were swimming happily in the little pond:

 

 

They tried very hard to keep out of my way, but the job was soon done and I left them to themselves.

Now you can see quite clearly in the photos above that both Dash and Vera were with Gertie and Honey yesterday afternoon, imagine then my consternation when only Dash was in the hut when I took Honey out to let John give her the 6 drops of Metacam.  How on earth had she got out, we couldn't see any gaps, nor was she hiding anywhere.  When the crowd came up the hill there she was, at the end, Vera!

We had a lot of trouble trying to get the 5 boys into the garage again, in the end we had to put Honey out of the way into her to-the-vet's-travelling-box, drive the lads into their home hut and grab them out again to transfer them into the garage.

I got extremely worried when I'd picked up Honey earlier for her medication, she felt very wet.  I convinced myself last night that I'd find her lying dead in the morning, worried all through a sleepless night.  So I left her hut till last this morning - just in case.  I couldn't have been more wrong, she was as lively as could be and I had a job to get hold of her.  During the night I'd determined that, if she was alive, I'd put her into the duck shed with the chicken wire frame in front, so that she could have contact with the others, and I put a bucket of water and a food container inside.

I said she was lively this morning, and she very nearly bamboozled both of us when I put her into the shed.  From a standing start she flew up on top of the chicken wire frame, and if both of us hadn't been standing right in front she would have been away!  We hung the curtain in front which we used in 2011 to stop the fluffy ducklings running out during rain, that would secure rest for her leg, we thought.

I was still finishing cooking dinner when I looked out of the window and saw Honey running down to the duck pond  -  it couldn't be, surely?  But yes, the shed was empty.  Don't ask me how she got out, I don't know.  It's obviously very hard to stop a determined duck.

We shall still have to get hold of her for her medicine morning and night, but apart from that I'll leave her in the company she wants to be in.