Our ducklings quickly outgrew their dabbling dish, so I figured they were big enough to swim.

Mark added a door to their brooder Friday, but I wanted to wait until I could monitor them before letting the ducks into their pond.  Here I am carrying the ducklings from their temporary bin back to the relocated brooder on Friday afternoon.

The youngsters weren't so sure they wanted to come out at first, but putting their dabbling dish right outside the door quickly changed the ducklings' minds.  They're so big now that they can't even pretend to swim in the dish, though, so I scooted the the container a little closer to the pond to tempt the ducklings beyond their comfort zone.

"Oh my gosh, is all of that water?!" one exclaimed.

Plop, plop, plop --- soon every duckling was in the drink.  Mark had wondered if ducklings need to learn to swim --- the answer is no.  These guys have already started oiling their feathers due to their early dunking, so even though they were skittish of the big expanse of pond, they had no problem staying afloat.  They also cleaned up the duckweed in short order.  I'm going to have to dig another sky pond to stock up on duckweed before I'm entirely cleaned out!

I shut the ducklings back up in their brooder when we left the farm from the day, but I look forward to a lazy day today watching them play while reading in the shade.  Hopefully the ducklings will convince me they're big enough to dabble unattended, although I suspect I'll still spend far too much time watching their antics.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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