Grangerland RFD
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    • Driving Miss Sally >
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    • Mom's Memories, Ruth Wilcox >
      • Early twentieth century life 1
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    • Donkeys and other critters >
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        • Blue - The Herd Matriarch
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        • The Farrier Visits
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        • Where the girls are
        • How the herd does grow.
        • Feeding the Family
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    • All about our goats >
      • Making a Goat Shelter
      • Bodacious
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      • Remodeling the Nursery
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      • The Odd Couple
      • Bob gets a haircut
      • Security goes rogue.
      • Bob slows down a little
    • Birds >
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        • Living with kiwi and skittles
        • When your parrots get bored.
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        • The Weaning
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      • Alfalfa
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      • A New Deputy
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      • 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
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    • Special Education Classes Can't do that! >
      • Almost Free, our classroom Hybrid EV
    • Vehicles >
      • Hard working Wheels
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      • RV Man Cave
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      • Old dog learns new tricks
      • Smorgasbord
      • Unrequitted Love, 2002 Saturn Vue
      • Going Cheap
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      • Off Road Anybody? >
        • Jeep Gladiator
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    • 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?
  • 5 Years In

Peep Peep

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Commitment levels will vary from person to person depending on a number of things. The classic example is the dedication of the chicken and the pig in making your bacon and egg breakfast. I think in childbirth the blood, sweat, and tears spent by the father cannot possibly equal those of the mother. Men, are generally relieved by this fact. In this particular hatching Sally and our Brother in Law Joe invested their time. They set alarms to turn the eggs four times daily starting at 5am.

I was allowed to watch, without commitment, because I was redundant.
​The parents were also redundant. These eggs were all found on the ground ouutside the chickenhouse. There were two choices. Eat them for breakfast or break out the incubator and replenish the egg laying stock. If I remember correctly we started out with 7 eggs and you will see the results belowl
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When you think about hatching a chick or a duckling you probably think the hard part is the mother laying the egg. I’m certain I thought that but not any more. I know that hatching is different than a live birth but you surely agree that there are commonalities. One tends to think of a hatchling’s development as being under a mothers tutelage and I think that’s fair. Certainly not required but preferred.

Absolutely the best cases has happened at our place have been when a mother has played a part. That would be when a mother duck raises ducklings, a mother hen raises chicks, or, in one case a mother duck raises 7 chicks. Even though it is not normal in any of our species it could even be a father (see Penguins for example).



This little guy just broke free of his egg. Just looking at him and at it, you have to wonder how he ever fit inside. He certainly had not grown more although his feathers did puff out. I have never seen a chicken or a duck appear to be this exhausted. Looks dead, doesn’t he?  What happened next was what really made me question what I thought I knew about animals.


After a catnap he struggled over to the next egg to be hatched and started peeping at it.  Evidently not satisfied with its’ progress he attempted to peck at the hole his sibling had started. This behavior  when he was about 2 hours old.

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Here you see the action after two of them had broken free. They both seemed to lay across the unhatched  eggs peeping for their siblings to break free. They even pulled at exposed body parts trying to pull them out. During the whole process the unhatched eggs were peeping back at them.  Getting together and out of the egg seemed to be cause for great celebration. I know that a biologist or a human behaviorist would accuse me of anthropomorphism and I don’t mind. If you spend too much time in a book and not enough watching animals growing with their own kind thats exactly the opinion you will have.
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We wound up with four. Can’t tell you the difference between the first and the fourth (hatched the next day).  Couldn’t tell by the time they were 24 hours old.  One (foreground) has a tuft on the back of his head. Don’t know the male and female breakdown yet. All I know is that I have four normal little ducks who appear incapable of doing anything extraordinary. Glad I don’t need to make a living predicting what all these critters will do next.

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