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Water!

What a problem I had with their water! I thought this would be the easiest of things to cater for.. but no, finding a good "waterer" for my ducklings proved very difficult! It all started a few hours before I went to get my ducklings. I would need to make a large "thing" that would hold water, deep enough so the duckling's could wash out their eyes and nostrils yet secure enough not to let them in there to have a paddle. So I began to think along the lines of a trough of some form (those big chicken waterers would of been ideal, but I couldn't get my hands on one) and attacked an empty coke bottle with a pair of sissors-cutting out long rectangles in the side of the bottle. Feeling quite proud, I layed my new trough on the kitchen table, only to have it roll away and leave me feeling quite stupid. A cylinder clearly wasn't going to be very helpful when five ducklings were pushing and shoving to drink. I turned to my fridge for ideas and went through all the bottle shapes we had, letting out a sigh of "hurrah" when I saw the milk containers. Plastic, large and oblong.. perfect. I set to work again with sissors, cutting long rectangles which I thought would be just the right sise to allow the duckling's head and neck through but stop them at the shoulders. Kinda like cattle eating from a manger - and I guess that's what I was imagining the ducklings to be like whilst drinking.. how very wrong I was..

Here's a picture of this "waterer" (missing it's lid!)..

I was quite chuffed really. The next day as planned we (my parents and I) went off to buy their food that we had previously ordered and after that the ducklings. The ducklings were so small! I couldn't get over that all ten of them quite happily fitted into a shoebox during the journey home and couldn't wait to show them their new home. When we arrived back home I put the shoebox into their pen (I figured I'd let them adjust a little bit before I separated them) then one by one I lifted them out, carefully dipped their beaks into the water (they gulped it greedily so they must have been dehydrated fro mthe journey) and into their food so they new where it was. First thing I learnt was that, although 1 day old these ducklings clearly loved eachother more than they were going to love me, for when seperated or isolated a duckling would "peep" VERY loudly and in a frightend manner (I must admit i felt like a right meany) but once reunited the ducklings all stuck together and didn't let me come between them (I was in the duck-house so to speak). So after dipping ten little bills very carefully into their water I watched them, hoping they would settle in. By this point I was a little worried, because each of them had really appriciated their bills being dipped and I wanted them all to have a good long drink before I'd leave them be. A few attempted "herdings" towards the two milk-bottle-waters I had made and plenty of insults thrown at me from those tiny bills for daring to herd them -later the ducklings soon clicked as to where their water was. Ah, at last! Now I can let them get on with their own thing I thought, turning to get out of the pen.. when.. splashing noises? I whipped round and with my horror discoverd that two of the ducklings had pushed through my rectangle holes and were now having the time of their lives paddling in the shallows while their mates eagerly tried to join them!! The big thing here is that once wet ducklings don't dry quickly and are prone to deadly colds, in the wild the mother duck covers her babies with oils (so that's wh yyou see them swimming) mine however, weren't supposed to be doing that till they had thier own oils! Horrified, I bumbled back into the pen (of course spooking the poor thingsl into loud peeps of terror) and tried to get the ducklings out again - tipping the water onto their previously warm and dry sawdust. My finger probing (attempting to gentily push them back out the rectangle) wasn't working as they just became more scared than they already were because they had seen their friends take off at the sight of me! Thinking as clever as any homosapien can I put the waterer back onto ground level, ducklings inside this time making sure the two inside could see the gang outside - this worked. In an ernest attempt to join their friends the two ducklings pushed past the rectangles once more and joined the others outside... thankfully only a little bit damp. I was momentairily relieved until I saw the same senario happening in the second waterer!
Half an hour later.. after drying off the dampend ducklings as best I could with a towel and confiscating the waterers for a few moments I was back to square one.. in need of a waterer that would keep the ducklings out! The original model, reinforced with pipe cleaners did the trick very well, and in a few moments I had design number 2 in the pen and working smoothly with the ducklings!

Design number 2 (also missing the lid!)

It was infact to my parents I own the next design. A few days later the waterers were begining to become worst for wear and needed replacing. My parents suggested Design number 3 which - still using a milk bottle as the main design - had the holes for the ducks to drink from only large enough to let their heads through. With some careful measuring we cut squares near the bottom of the milk container for the ducklings and this served them fine for ages.

Design number 3 (missing lid!)

When the ducklings got bigger all we did was turn the thing around, so the holes were now on duck-head-level and the water was deeper for them to wash their faces in.

Now came the next problem. Ducklings are messy and they were soon making the area around their waterers wetter than I expected. I counteracted this by simply replacing the damp sawdust each day... but we were running low on sawdust.. so now came the planning of some form of container that would keep the sawdust dry AND not let the ducklings paddle in it. At first we had round trays filled with stones (as you can see from the picture above) but the trays proved to be too shallow so we soon resorted to two old cat trays filled with stones instead, this did the job.. but geez it was hard work! This is where I had the disadvantage of not being able to let my ducks live outside (although they did have an outside pen) as they would of now been doing so if they were to stay as pets at my house... which they weren't. The waterers were later modified again so they had bigger holes for the almost-duck-sized-ducklings.
I had to clean clean clean basically each time they dirtied things! Their waterers proved to be the most probmatic thing and contributor to mess in their pens, and were infact the hardest thing to get a hang of! Yes, my hair did fall out.

That's it for the water section!

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