Grangerland RFD
  • Home
    • Govt Contractor Caught Working
    • Testimonial for Chriopractic
    • The Rambling Cardinal II
    • Finding a name: Parkinson's Disease
    • The Great Winter Storm of 2014
    • it was a very long week
    • The Christmas Lights
    • Improving the Gene Pool 2
    • Mother's Day, on the Farm
    • A working birthday party
  • Family
    • Driving Miss Sally >
      • Texas >
        • Anahuac National Wildlife Preserve 1/3/17
        • Anahuac Birds 8/1/16
        • Birds of East Barnard
        • San Barnard Preserve
        • What is Geocache?
        • Even More Geocache
        • Geocache Log
        • 2/19/14 Geocache Log
        • Geocache , 4 June 2014
        • The Rambling Cardinal
        • Taking a break
      • Canada >
        • From Houston to Points North
        • Travels in Maine
        • Bar Harbor to Halifax
        • Peggys Cove
        • Halifax
        • Halifax to Ingonish Ferry N.S.
        • Cape Breton Eye Candy
        • More Cape Breton Eye Candy
        • Prince Edward Island
        • Sackville Waterfowl Park, New Brunswick
      • With family in Florida >
        • Melborne to Saint Augustine
        • Florida to home
    • Mom's Memories, Ruth Wilcox >
      • Early twentieth century life 1
      • Early twentieth century life 2
      • Early twentieth century life 3
      • Early twentieth century life 4
      • My memories of Mom
      • Carol's memories of Mom
      • Memories of Grandma and Grandpa
    • Galveston County Rodeo
    • The Playground
    • Amie's Love Story
    • Going to the Circus
    • The medical blizzard
    • Trebuchets for fun and games
    • Alex's trip
    • Birthday Dilemma
  • Our farm and animals
    • New Arrivals
    • Links for donkey pages
    • Donkeys and other critters >
      • Eeyore >
        • Blue - The Herd Matriarch
        • Eeyore and the sheep
        • Eeyore and the girls
        • Why we became Llama Ranchers
        • More Llama Tales
        • A donkey named Houdini
        • The Farrier Visits
        • The Homecoming
        • More cute baby pictures
        • Glad that's over
        • Where the girls are
        • How the herd does grow.
        • Feeding the Family
    • Crape Myrtles and other stuff
    • All about our goats >
      • Making a Goat Shelter
      • Bodacious
      • Setting the table
      • Funeral, on the farm
      • Never too old
      • Remodeling the Nursery
    • Tail of Two Dogs >
      • The Odd Couple
      • Bob gets a haircut
      • Security goes rogue.
      • Bob slows down a little
    • Birds >
      • Adoption, Parrot Style >
        • Living with kiwi and skittles
        • When your parrots get bored.
        • Parrots at Play
        • The Weaning
        • Who owns who?
        • Baby (Bird) Sitting
      • The turkey looking b
      • Alfalfa
      • Our 2 Knotheads
      • A New Deputy
      • Changing of the Guard
      • Egg Hunts
      • Weathervanes
      • New Landscape Crew
      • Motherhood, or something like it
      • The Muscovy Chronicles >
        • Displaced Ducklings
        • Tall Dark Stranger
        • Tall Dark Stranger starts a family (sortakinda)
        • The Extra Duckling
        • It takes a village
        • Don't mess with Mama Duck
        • Gang of Eight
        • The Natural Method
        • Determination
        • Mission Barely Possible
        • They aren't Muscoveys
        • Peep Peep
      • Our (chicken) melting pot
  • Flotsam and Jetsam
    • Join the Navy, he said
    • Submarines, Targets, and other Navy Stuff >
      • Nuke Down
      • Subs: My first boat (SS343)
      • My second boat
      • Shipwreck and survival
      • Tragedy averted, the Seawolf
      • Dizzying Change 1945-1965
      • Submarine Life or Living in a sewer pipe.
      • Navy Unit, Fort Detrick
      • My favorite shore station
      • A voice from the past
      • 2017 New Orleans
      • Connections
    • Special Education Classes Can't do that! >
      • Almost Free, our classroom Hybrid EV
    • Vehicles >
      • Hard working Wheels
      • My love affair with Nissan
      • Class Project, Art Car
      • 59 Chevy Viking School Bus
      • My first new car
      • The do whatever project
      • Hillbilly Art Car
      • Handicapped?
      • Convoys to Mexico
      • The Perfect Getaway Car
      • Warm weather cars
      • Unidentified old car
      • Just use what you have
      • RV Man Cave
      • Goodbye Old Paint
      • A girl and her truck
      • Old dog learns new tricks
      • Smorgasbord
      • Unrequitted Love, 2002 Saturn Vue
      • Going Cheap
      • Never too many trailers
      • Hillbilly Hilton, Revisited
      • Off Road Anybody? >
        • Jeep Gladiator
        • Jeep Comanche
        • Very Rare, 1951 W.O. Jeepster
        • Off Road Lincoln
        • Stasi Van spotted in Conroe
    • Chimneys 101
    • Redneck Engineering >
      • My Swan Song
      • Confessions of a Faux Farmer >
        • Handling Hay
        • Donkey or Goat Fencing Guide
        • Doing Barbed Wire Cheaply
        • The Great Escape
        • Establishing Boundaries
        • Scraping the Ditch
        • Making a Fancy Fence >
          • Finally, done with fencing >
            • Faux Farmer Fabricates Feckless Feeders
        • Rain, rain, go away >
          • If a tree falls
          • Directory of Homeless Posts
          • Starting all over (gardening)
        • Texas welcomes new lake >
          • A day at the bank (of the pond)
          • Farm ponds do not require upkeep, right?
      • Redneck Engineering, The Porch Bench
      • Redneck Engineering, the next step >
        • Making it Livable
      • More concrete
      • Very Messy Muscovies
      • Improving the Gene Pool
      • The art of hanging a gate
      • Free Lumber
    • AC and Heating 101 >
      • A few basic concepts
      • Air Conditioning Systems
      • Free Passive Cooling
      • More Basic Stuff
  • Directory of Homeless Stories
    • For I was hungry
    • Your Government at Work
    • Evolution of a Little House of Care
    • The Beginning
    • Invisiible
    • Conroe Texas 2018
    • Directory of Homeless Stories
  • Justice anyone?

Mission Barely Possible

1/17/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Sally wanted an incubator for Christmas this year ( I kid you not) so that’s what she got. We had over a dozen duck eggs and all you had to do according to the advertisement was enter duck on the controls, add water, and let it go to work. 

Problem number one is that we have Muscovy ducks and they are different. They take five extra days and as she read about it most folks said it was mission impossible. She kept reading and found someone who said you had to break a few normal rules but that it was indeed possible. It was almost guaranteed that not all would hatch. He said that if you did it his way probably some would.

This is what it looked like on the 35th day. Not the healthy looking egg in the foreground. Nothing grew there. The ugly dirty egg with the spot. Something is coming out. That is how we left it when we had to go to a Doctors appointment.


Picture
And this is what it looked like when we came home. He was tuckered and you can’t tell much from the picture. Couldn’t tell much in person either. His head was inside the eggshell on the right. No room to move so Sally removed the shell.


Picture
A little distance adds perspective. The white spot is eggshell. Sally candled the other eggs (again) after he was born and he was the only one.


Picture
We aren’t much for having the outdoor animals in the house but he wouldn’t survive if he were placed outdoors by himself. That meant he needed to have a home that was easily cleanable. Sally had found a plan for such an item (called a brooder) and I had picked up the parts on Tuesday. It needed to start with two picture frames exactly the same size.


Picture
Next we needed a tote that I found at Lowes. Using the inside of one of the frames, mark and remove a hole the size of the inside of the frames.


Picture
Cut a piece of 1/2 inch hardware cloth and attach it to the top of the bottom frame. Then make a frame, hardware cloth, tote top, and top frame sandwich.  Someone was a master craftsman here if I do say so myself. We wound up with something large enough for the 15 day-old Black Runner ducks that we are getting in March.


Picture
By late afternoon this is what the baby looked like. He looks wet but is actually dry. We thought he would be ok right where he was but he kept banging in head on the ceiling. Muscovy ducks are big even when new.


Picture
We needed to adjust the heat to 95 degrees before we moved him. I had bought a lightbulb that I thought was just about right for that size box but it was stuck at about 91.


That meant we needed to raise the floor. That called for sacrifice. Sally donated a tablecloth to the cause and we put it on top of a couple inverted boxes that we cut down.


Picture
By this time we figured he was ready to move. He kept looking bigger (he wasn’t) and the incubator kept looking smaller. Look at the feet on this little dude.


Picture
On the other hand when he made it from newborn into the nursery he was tiny and the space was mammoth. We had found that we were setup for chickens or ducks but not one duck or one chick. The small red feeder and waterer are from Tractor Supply. The cuddle toy also. It was a big hit the first night but then on the second one he had become used to humans and is staring at me as I write this. 


This stuffed tiger or whatever will be useful later when we have to leave him alone.


Picture
He seemed to be splay footed. Sally figured Physical Therapy was in order. I agreed. Cupping your hands and letting him walk seemed to be in order. By later in the day he was running. Perhaps we were overanxious parents.


Picture
Just making sure he was drinking. He was. He didn’t seem to be eating so we added a couple crumbles to the water. He adapted and now seems to divide his time between eating, drinking, sleeping, and staring out at us.


Picture
Really doesn't look like the same bird. I suspect he thinks that Sally is his mom. Not terribly surprising as he has only really seen the two of us and our two dogs. She is the most likely suspect for motherhood.

Picture
And we leave you with these thoughts.

1. A day makes a lot of difference. and,
2. The first one is always hardest.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Parenting is such a blessing.

    Archives

    January 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly