Homestead Updates | New Ducklings | Egg Yolk Peritonitis | Episode 7

Welcome to Episode 7 of the Duck Ladies Pondcast with Host Krissy from @DunkinDucks and Emily from ​@CheeseandQuackersHomestead ! In episode 7 we discuss updates on Cheese & Quackers Homestead and why we couldn't film an episode last week.

Table Of Contents: 
00:00 Intro
01:05 Krissy's Exciting Update
06:17 Emily's Homestead Updates | New Ducklings | Silver Breeding Project | Egg Yolk Peritonitis | Predator Attack
44:15 Closing


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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, and welcome to the Duck Ladies Podcast episode seven. I'm your host, Chrissy from Dunkin' Ducks here with Emily from She's a Quacker's Homestead. And on today, we're gonna be debriefing some things that have happened recently, mostly on Emily's homestead.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

It's like all on my homestead. For a minute, we were both chaotic and we both had a lot going on, and then yours stopped, and mine just didn't, and I just continued to have chaos.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

I tried to be like professional on our posts, on our socials, and be like, due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to cancel last week's episode, and then Emily comes in comments and she's like, no, guys, it's just me. It's my birds.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

My birds are like trying to kill me with stress, I swear to God. I'm so excited right now, by the way, guys, because I get to vent to Chrissy about everything. I vent to Chrissy all week, anyway, because she's my duck person that I just need to talk duck things with. But now I get to like fully talk because there's some things that I actually haven't really talked to you about that I want to talk about today. So, how about you start with your homestead and farm updates? Because we know mine is gonna take up the core of the episode because there's so much that happened.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Okay, so I have to introduce you to somebody. I already know about this. So this is unnamed baby duck. I wasn't planning on having unnamed baby duck. I was hatching eggs for a friend. Long story short, we lost power during incubation, like all night. And we have a generator, but we were asleep, so we didn't even know the power was out, and that really screwed up the incubation. So at the end of the day, only one egg hatched. And this duckling is so attached to me. There's no way that I could be like, here, friend, take this single duckling. But raising a single duckling is hard because of how attached they become to you. Um, I don't recommend raising a single duckling ever. I would never choose to do this. This was an accident. And I did place an order with Metzer Farms, so I will have some babies coming hopefully sometime this week. Because our little duckling here needs friends. And I don't want her to be alone because I literally like I can't go to the bathroom without her like screaming. Like she has to see me all hours of the day, or she's so stressed, which is like so stressful for me because it's like unfair to her that she doesn't have any friends. And I just want her to have a little little good life. I actually I don't know if this is a boy or a girl yet. I'm really hoping it's a girl because I'm very attached to her.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

You have to do the, you have to do the wishful calling it a she. It works every time, I swear to god. If you just call them she, that's what you got.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Also, I'm huge, like I know, I'm pretty sure she's a blue bibbed, and I I technically don't have a blue bibbed. Like blueberry, blueberry could be a blue bibbed, but she's more she's like super mismarked. She just like blue is like model random. Yeah. Yeah. But this one looks like it could be a true blue bibbed, so that's exciting. That's really all I have going on here. I like can't leave the house or do anything because I have to hold this baby all the time.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

When Chrissy messaged me about this duck, he was like, I hatched one duck, and I said, I hope you don't have plans. She goes, I was supposed to go grocery shopping. Do I need to go grocery shopping? Probably. Am I going to? No. And I was like, yeah, because when you have a single duckling, it's a nightmare. You have to spend all of your you have to be its broodmates, basically. And so I would also get so attached if this ever happened to me. So I knew the minute you told me that happened, I was like, congrats on your new duckling, because you're never gonna get rid of that.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Also, like I feel like it's also different if you have a group of ducklings and then something happens and they all die except one, versus just hatching a single duckling. Because first of all, she's imprinted on me. She thinks I'm her mom. I knew that there are like developmental delays and issues that can arise from being alone, but like it's even more difficult than I thought, which is why I'm finding that it's even more unethical than I thought to raise a single duckling because like she it was very hard to teach her how to eat. And normally you have ducklings in a group and they just like eat, you know, one starts eating, they all start eating. She figured out how to drink. I was able to teach her that pretty quickly, but like I couldn't get her to eat, and I had to like teach her how to do it, and she just like wasn't getting it. She's eating now and pooping now, so I'm like very relieved about that. But I always talk about how so, like my favorite movie is um The Wild Robot. I don't want to like spoil it for anyone, but it's it's an incredible movie. And in this movie, there's a goose, right? A baby goose, and it's not raised by a goose, it's raised by a robot. And then when it like finally meets other geese, they like don't get along and they're bullying it, and it doesn't know how to swim like a goose. And that's like what happens in real life when you have just one baby raised by a human and not around other ducks, it doesn't know how to communicate to other ducks, which is why it's so important to add in more ducklings as fast as possible. Obviously, I can't just hatch more ducklings, it's gonna take 26 days. So I was like, Messer Farms needs to come to the rescue, which I think is, I mean, honestly, really your only option, especially when it comes to like call ducklings. Where am I gonna find a call duckling locally to be yeah, his friends? It's hard. It's hard.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah, and the thing that people like if if you're just getting into ducks or you're listening to this, you don't know that much about ducks, that people also need to realize is that we're saying that this is a difficult situation for Chrissy, or like if I had this happen, it would be a difficult situation for even me. And both of us do this full time. So Chrissy is able to actually provide the full-time attention to this duck. Like most people would not be able to do that. And even both of us, when she has this duckling, we're like, oh my god, your life is ruined for the next X amount of days until you can fix this. So you never want to get yourself into that situation if you can avoid it. That's why I actually changed my hatch order for my hatch. I'm requiring a minimum of a dozen because I don't want people to set six and accidentally hatch one, especially with the bad hatch rates for call ducks. And I'm also setting my hatchling requirement to a minimum of three. If I ever have two, I'll give you two if I need to get rid of two or move two. But honestly, I'm more likely to grow out two and sell them as adults and deal with it myself than I am to hand out two at this point. Should I show, first of all, should I introduce your baby to my baby that I went crazy for? Of course. Let me get her.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Him, maybe we don't know. You want to see a friend? Somebody besides your mirror? Oh my god, I'm so excited to show this for her.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Okay, guys. This is a whole story in itself. The story behind this little one is this. So somebody bought my hatch eggs, right? And they sent me a picture of the ducks that they hatched. And I saw this. This is peanut. This is peanut's offspring, like DNA copy peanut. And I said, if you sell those ducklings, give me that. I need that immediately. And so she actually was selling the ducklings because she's trying to hatch for certain colors and she didn't get those colors. And so I made DD drive and go grab me this duck. And I'm praying that this is a female because if this is a female, I'm keeping it and I will have a perfect little peanut. Also, the thing that I'm really looking for in this duckling is Peanut's personality because Peanut has an insanely unique personality. I can already guarantee you this one, it's peanut. This is Peanut birthed her exact personality into a duck. This one is like, it's just a little bit off. It doesn't really do much if you go to grab it. It doesn't run, it does not care. It's just very peanut-oriented. And it looks, you can see her in this duck. Yes. I was like, I've never seen a hatchling from Peanut that looked exactly like she did as a baby. And I was like, give it to me. And I'm so excited. I don't know if I told you this already. She hatched more peanuts. I think one is a gingerbread baby. I'm taking all of the snowy looking peanut offspring, and I'm hoping I can raise another peanut. So I'm gonna take that one and then at least I'll know I have multiple. So hopefully I can get a female. I have a bunch of, should I show the hatchlings? I'll show the different colors of hatchlings I got from my eggs because I just ended up, she had a bunch, and I was like, just give me the lot and I'll I'll deal with it. So I have a bunch of hatchlings from my flock right now that I did not incubate. I bought them back from somebody who bought my hash eggs, which is a little silly because I also have a bunch of incubators going. But since I'm keeping this one, I'm likely keeping another duckling from this group. And I think I picked out which one. I don't think I've showed you yet. This is what I'm keeping, though. So this is the other one that I picked out from that group to keep. I feel like I'm gonna lose the one on my lap. This looks like it's gonna be a blue fawn, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

And so I don't have a blue fawn. I've never had a blue fawn. And so I painted this one's toenail because there's a lot of blue fawn in that group. So this one has a blue toenail so that I don't accidentally get rid of it. And then I wanted to show you this. This year I'm seeing a lot of black bibb in my hatches from people that send me photos and a lot of silver. Like a reliable amount of silver. I'll get into that in a second. Let me show you this duckling first. This one, it looks like yours in black, doesn't it? Yeah. They both have a spot on their head. Yeah, they both have the head spots. I thought the head spots on this one were so cute. I was like, I wanted to keep this one, but the person that's getting some of these ducklings from me, I was like, I need to give them something other than blue fawn and gray. So I was like, this one's adorable, and I should give it to them. But this is gonna be ours tentatively. As long as it's not a male, I don't want a male. So we'll see what happens when I grow this one out. But they're so cute.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

I'm so excited about having a blue fawn. It could also be a couple other more like rare colors. Because I know you don't have a blue fawn in your flock. I'm not entirely sure how the blue fawn genetics work, but there's a couple other colors, like I think like nutmeg and like I don't know, there's other variations that look similar, but I think blue fawn is probably the most likely because it's the most common.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Yeah, I had a hope because it you know what it looks like? It looks like popcorn or like these the blue Australian spotted. It does. And so for for a second, I was like, what if it's an Australian spotted culda cross and popcorn was actually laying eggs? And sometimes I can miss an egg. I'm losing ducks. I could miss an egg because usually I weed out my Australian spotted eggs from my hatch eggs, but I could have missed one in it. But I don't think popcorn laid any actual eggs this year. So I'm like, I don't think it is, but I had some slight hope, and I was like, it does look like one, but I don't think it is. Also, I mean, but also it would have it would be more culduck than it would be Australian spotted because Australian spottucks have called duck blood. So when you breed an Australian spotted to a culduck, you get more of a call duck-looking bird. So it has like the short bill, and so I was like, no, I don't, I don't really think so. But either way, I wish it was popcorn spade. I'm gonna put these back because they're crazy. The only other color I I have from that group of hatchlings is gray. And I think we all know what gray looks like. So it's just blue fawn, gray, black bibbed, and then the snowy. And so about the silvers, anchovy, a lot of you, if you follow my channel specifically, you guys know my silver anchovy. Um anchovy's getting picked on like so bad in main pen. I don't know why. Wow. And so her, it's the Drakes. Like the Drakes are like, they're not just overbreeding her, they're like picking on her. And so I was like, she's fine. Like she's doing fine, but it's affecting her feather quality. And so I'm not like stressed out because she's not getting hurt. Like I her feathers being damaged, it's not giving her wet feather or anything like that. But I was like, I just don't like it because like I feel like getting picked on like that is probably annoying for her, even though she seems fine. And so with my breeding pen that I'm working on to do the white breeding project, I'm keeping it separated in such a way that I can technically do two colors in there. And I was thinking to myself the other day, I was like, maybe I won't do two colors. Maybe what I'll use the second half of the pen for is for females that need a break from the Drakes or something like that. And the only female that I really feel like needs a break from the Drakes is Chovy because they're like actually affecting her. And then I was thinking, wait, does silver breed true? Because I'm seeing so many silver hatchlings. And if I moved Chovy to a new pen, I would eliminate the issue of her getting picked on. And then maybe I could breed silvers because I can move her with sardine, which is my other silver. So this morning I texted Scott and Evan. I sent them a picture of my two birds, and I was like, is this a good start to a silver breeding project? And they were like, Yeah, do it. They were like, good idea. You just I have to hatch a silver drake. Okay, the one time I'm hatching for a Drake, I guarantee you I'll get all hands. Of course. So that flock is actually gonna be blue or white and silver, and then in the spring, they'll all live together most of the year. And then in the spring, I'll split it into two pens and do a silver breeding project and a white breeding project, and it'll be so cool. Like, I'm so excited about that. And both of them breed true, and I fix another problem that I kind of have in my flock, which is obviously so pretty.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Because silver can like silver, like your two silvers look very different, and I love that you can either have like an all-white duck with a gray bill, or you can have like a splash or a bid.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Like, this is exciting. I feel like it's gonna give like a really cool variety, so I'm super excited about it. And I'm also excited because this will be like the first breeding project that I'm like really feeling like I'm starting from scratch. Because like with my whites, I just ordered it in whites from Metzer. And when you order in birds from a hatchery, they've already done multiple generations of like getting rid of certain traits so that like I know my whites are gonna be true. Granted, I will refine my whites line to like what I want it to be. And we'll talk about all this in a different episode because me and Chrissy have so much to say on the ethics of breeding and ethics of call duct. Um, so I'm gonna refine the whites line to what I want it to be eventually, but for now I'm just trying to get the color down and then I'm gonna move forward from there. Whereas my silver fly, I kind of am starting from square one. Like it's and so I think it's gonna be really fun for me. So I'm like super stoked because I loved the idea of doing whites, but I felt like I would get bored. I was like, I'm gonna want color because I love color. And so I was like, I know I'm gonna want color. And silver is one of my favorite colors. So I was like, I'm so stoked that that works perfectly. However, the only problem with it is I am moving so many birds around that I'm done, my main pen needs females. I was like, basically deleted all of the female additions I made last year, and with the way my drakes are since they're young. So that's why I'm also like, okay, I can keep birds from hatch, do grow outs, do a bunch of things. But let me tell you, all of the work that I've done into making like multiple areas to put my birds, life is so much easier. Like, that's awesome. I could not recommend this enough because, like, a small problem, like, I'm sorry, Chovy, Chovy is getting picked on. But I love Chovy. I would never get rid of Chovy. And sometimes when a bird's getting picked on, what I have to do is relocate the bird. And I there's no universe, like, I'm sorry, Chovy, I will let you get picked on. I'll protect you. But you stay with me. You know what I mean? So it made it so much easier to shuffle birds around. The other bird that I could put in there, I could put cannoli, which is a blue, in the silver breeding pen and still get relatively reliable silver when pairing her with a dilution gene. And she might benefit from that during breeding seasons when the drakes are hard on her. So I can like move so many birds around. I could put black in there and then reliably get blue. Like I was talking to Scott and Evan about it this morning. They got me so excited because they were telling me all these things you can do. And the dilution gene works so cleanly. It works exactly how you want genetics to work. So I was like, I love this because it's easy as hell. Like, if I want blue, I could put a black with a silver and get blue, you know? Because the dilution gene tones down the black. And same thing with blue. I could put blues in there and still get a lot of silver and get some blue. Super easy. So I'm so excited about that decision.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

I think the blue, black, splash, or blue, black, silver um, in ducks is like one of the best ways to get started understanding genetics because it's very clear cut of like what you put together will give you what percentage of blue, black, or splash, aka silver in ducks. So for anyone that's like interested in learning more about genetics and ducks, I would say start there because you can get three different colors and like fully understand like what's going into them a lot easier.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Yeah, and I'm so excited that I get to keep my silvers because that girl that has been selling her hashlings that she's been getting for me, she hatched a silver this morning and I was like, can I have it? But uh, I think she said she thinks she's keeping it. It depends if she like actually gets other colors. So we'll see. I might get her silver. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna keep. I'm sorry to everybody that buys ducklings from me, but I'm keeping silvers. I'm gonna keep all of my silvers. I'll get you silvers next year on a discount if you're watching this and you were hoping for silver. I'm sure that because I'm hatching. So the first hatch that somebody did from my eggs, they got two silvers in a dozen, which is crazy. And it's because my blue magpie must be carrying the dilution gene, and he's breeding my silver heads, and that's what's giving me those silvers now. Yep. So I'm like, I can probably get a lot from these incubators I have, and I can keep myself enough that I know I get a good amount of ducks. But that's why what's weird about when you are doing projects like this that I've learned is in order to be able to get rid of ducklings, you have to get a mass amount of ducklings so that I can weed them out in groups to make it easier to move along drakes. Does that make sense? So that's why with this snowy, I'm like, if she hatches more snowy, give me more snowy and hopefully I can make a pair and move that along and keep the ones that I want. So this is going to be a psycho year of ducklings for me. It's okay, I love it. So I'm like, whatever. But it's so awesome. Like, I'm having so much fun doing up the pens and everything like that. But I could talk about this all day. So we're gonna move on to the chaos portion of what's been going down in my homestead and some of the sad stuff because popcorn died. If you guys didn't see that, it still doesn't feel real to me. I have not processed that death, like I don't know why it was. I think it was because so much was going on that week.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Yeah. That I can't blame you.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Also, she went from fine to dead in such a short window of time, and I had another blue Australian spotted that I was moving out at the same time. And so it just feels like she's still in there. Whereas when Dipper died, like I felt like the full absence of that bird. I don't know. There's something weird about popcorn's death for me, where like I just don't feel like it actually happened.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Like, yeah, I feel like it's like popcorn and Dipper are together again, and that's how it was always meant to be. So it's like sad.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

That's yeah, it's like exactly it. Like, I was sad, but genuinely she was so depressed since Dipper died. That was like when so when popcorn first started getting sick or starting to act off, I actually called Chrissy and I said, Hey, I think popcorn's sick. And this was weeks before she was actually symptomatic with EYP. And all I noticed was that she was just a little different. And the weirdest thing that now makes sense to me is she was the only thing I saw was she was napping differently, like otherwise completely normal. But when she was napping, she was laying with her head in a way that I've never seen her lay. And I was like, what the heck is she doing? Like she would sleep with her head turned to the side, like on the ground. And usually she always tucked her head. Now, what I think was happening is she was she already had some of that inflammation in her abdomen. So she was trying to lay in a way that redistributed the pressure, and that's why it looked different to me, even though she wasn't showing inflammation, was it still acting normally, other than the weird sleeping. Um, that's the thing about birds, is when they get sick, you don't catch it because the symptoms are so bizarre. So you don't catch it until they're sick, sick.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Also, at the time, we were like, well, obviously she's depressed. So, like weird behavior, we can chalk up to depression because her best friend died.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yeah, and a hundred percent I thought she was depressed because it definitely before she was even sick, because I know if she had started being as sick as she was from the internal laying at that point, she would have already been long dead, if that makes sense. So before she was even sick, she was already depressed and she was already isolating more and acting differently. Granted, like some form of internal laying could start, but this is before her laying season it even really started. And so she was depressed, and then all of this happened. I was sad, and the whole situation was sad because I lost this whole part of my flock, which was popcorn and dipping dot. But also at the same time, I think there was so much comfort in the concept that she was one out of the depression and she was like going to be with dippin' dot, which is like I always said, I can't imagine these birds living on without each other. And so it just felt it genuinely felt like, and the same thing when she was sick. Usually birds fight really hard to live. Like that is normal if they're survival instincts. She her inflammation was down. She had done the round of antibiotics, she was improving, and she did not care. She did not want to fight, she did not want to move around, she didn't want to swim, she didn't want to move from the tote. She wanted to die, she didn't want to eat. You know, I know she could have eaten, but she didn't want to. And so I was like, you just want to die. And I'm going to let you. I'm going not let you, but like first round, I did the antibiotics, I did the fluid draining, I did our first line of defense. And when I got to the end of that and she showed no interest in life, I said, I'm not gonna force you to keep doing this. I'm gonna let you go. There's a lot of things like with EYP that like I wasn't willing to do. And me and Chrissy talked about all of this. Um, we could have made like a million podcast episodes if we just recorded our phone calls. There's like a million things with EYP that I was not willing to do to this specific duck. One, because I already like a duck that's depressed is already like what I would consider fragile. So I was not going to there then take a depressed duck and put her through a ton of treatment, a ton of isolation, a ton of additional things to make that depression worse. She was already kind of going into this illness in a negative state. Also, popcorn, while she's a friendly duck, she's not friendly to the extent. That I would need a duck to be in order to pursue a consistent and continued treatment. Um, because I don't think she would handle it well. Yeah. Okay, now I'm gonna cry over popcorn because ever so this is what this is what I'm literally gonna cry talking about this. This is what messes me up about popcorn so much, is because when Dippin' Dot was dying, popcorn was here for dip and dot. And when popcorn died, she died alone. And it was just me and her. And whenever I talk about popcorn at the vet, I think of that picture of popcorn and dipping dot hugging at the vet. Yeah. And that's what was going through my mind the entire time I thought about continuing further treatment with popcorn was that she at the vet was clinging to dipping dot because she was scared. And since she never bonded with other ducks, there was no duck I could bring with her as a buddy. We're both all messed up. There was no duck that I could people are gonna be like, you guys can't handle these animals. We can't. It's okay. There was no buddy for me to bring her, and so she would always be doing it alone. And I didn't know if she was gonna bond to the new Australian spotteds. And so I was like, I'm not doing that to her. I'm not bringing her to the vet. I'm not putting her through the stress of trying an implant, especially because I didn't know it was gonna work. And the risk that I would have been weighing is the potential of her going septic, and that's how me finding out that the implant was failing. Because she didn't show symptoms until she was super sick. Like to the point that the first night that I pulled popcorn in, I told Chrissy, I'm not sure she's gonna make it through the night. So I wasn't gonna risk her going through that repeatedly, and that being my indication that the implant was failing. The implant, just so people know, is not FDA approved for poultry, which means my vet didn't even offer it to me. I would have had to find a vet that was willing to do it. My vet might not be familiar with it in itself, and he would have to be the one to continue treatment. So I would be putting a vet that doesn't have much experience if he doesn't offer it in this situation, which makes it harder for him to manage. And I was just like, I'm not gonna pursue that for her. I'm not gonna do that to a duck that's already ready to go. Like, yeah, and I genuinely felt like when I gave up on her, and I like when I looked at her, I was like, I hear you, like I could feel it. I could feel it in her that she wanted to go. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna ease this out of you. Yeah, and I'm gonna put you down.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

I don't even necessarily feel like you made this decision to let her go. I feel like she told you that she made this decision and that she was asking you to let her be with Dipper.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

But yeah, so for popcorn, like the decision was always right in front of my face. Like, I knew what needed to be done for that duck, and I think we did the right thing. You want to know how I know I didn't process that death though? Because she was in my brooder upstairs, and usually like after a duck dies, I like clean everything up and just like you know, move on, and it is what it is. I couldn't bring myself to clean up her brooder, and I haven't yet been able to bring myself to throw this. I keep crying. Like, I don't know why now I'm crying. It's because I'm talking about it. I couldn't bring myself to throw out her medications vial. So yeah, I like I just it never like I think I've just been so in motion that like I haven't sat with it like I did with dip and dot.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

So I finally had to clean out her brooder or her box that she was in because like I had ducklings that I just needed to move into there. And like I remember like I hadn't moved her food or her oyster, and so I was like, that sucked. Like I just didn't want to do it yet.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Like, I don't know. Anyways, yeah, I totally I totally get it. After Munchkin died, I didn't want to. This is this is disgusting of me. I refuse to clean my car seats because she shit on my passenger seat, and I was like, that's Munchkin's spot. Like, no one else can sit there because it's her spot, so don't worry about it, guys. And then I had to sell my car, and I was like, I have to clean this. So it's weird. Trust me, I get it. I totally get it.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Grief is weird, dude. It makes you do some weird things. Like, yeah, I think if it wasn't for the fact that I had no choice but to clean out that brooder, like it would have sat there for a minute. I mean, granted, it was clean, like the bedding was dry because I had been replacing it so often to avoid her from like scalding, uh, because she wasn't moving much. So, like, the bla the bedding was clean and there was just a little dish of food, but I was like, yeah, it's time. Like, I gotta like do this. But I also like for anybody that is wondering, EYP is a really difficult complication to go through. It's actually one of the complications, I've never seen it before. I've I've always known about it, that once you catch it, you're in a really bad place, typically, because they've already been internally laying for an extended period of time, another symptomatic, and it's so likely to recur that it's really just a nightmare. Um and so it's always for me been on my call list. So the minute that I saw that she was showing signs of EYP and not binding, I had already started to think she's gonna die. And I, whether it be, I was hoping I could get more time out of her to just, you know, I wanted her to meet the new Australian spotted, see if she could make a new pair. I wanted to get her to that point, but I I was already kind of like, this is a means to an end at some point here. And I'm just gonna see what I can do. For anyone that doesn't know what EYP is, it's basically what a duck is quite literally laying eggs inside of their abdominal cavity. So it's a failure of the oviduct and it never makes it through the full passageway. And they lay it somewhere into their abdomen, and the yolk collects a lot of bacteria and it causes massive infections, very uncomfortable infections. It's a really tough reproductive complication. The signs and symptoms are super mild. It's really hard to catch this early, and the best thing you could do is catch it early because it's like lethargy, sometimes additional like nesting behavior, like egg egg laying behavior, like they're staying in the nesting boxes a lot. And it's it's a hard one to catch. Tail pumping was one of the ones I started. The big one with her was I noticed that she was walking funny. She was walking.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

That does make sense though, with the the abdomen being fluid-filled.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Yeah, so that was the big one that I saw early that I but I mean the thing that's hard with ducks is their early symptoms. I was talking about this with Chrissy when we were going through this. I was like, I want to start catching things earlier, but their early symptoms are like they take a slightly longer nap. And if I took every duck that took a slightly longer nap to the vet right away, I'd be taking a duck every day. You know what I mean? So I'm like, can I even do much better than I'm doing right now? Realistically, honestly, the answer is usually no. It's usually this is just a very unfortunate part of keeping these animals because they hide illness so well.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Yeah. And sometimes you really do like, if you let yourself get to that point where you think that every little thing is a big thing, you're going to one, completely deplete your vet funds unnecessarily. And two, drive yourself mad. And three, like, there are there are absolutely times where I can think, like, I'll just use coconut as an example. I've looked at coconut before and been like, her eyes aren't as open as they usually are. Obviously, she's dying. And yeah, I have like been concerned about coconut like many times because of that. Or I'll be like, her abdomen looks distended. Coconut was just overweight, okay? Coconut, she was just overweight, and she lost weight. Coconut's had a normal weight now, and I don't, I'm not like, wow, like her her abdomen looks descended, but really she was she was literally just overweight.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

You also get some ducks that like will act like they're dying for no reason. Like peanut. If I reacted every single time peanut was like acting off, like that bird would honestly probably have been called. Like she literally, she literally like it'll be slightly rainier than normal, and she'll be like twitching on the ground. And like that's just her baseline. Same thing with oatmeal. Like, oatmeal always looks like she's egg binding, but she just has to lay one of her weird eggs that she lays, and it's like yeah, a non-ish.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Sugar does the same thing. And yesterday I had um some relatives stop in, and so sugar sleeps, like she's so weird, she looks like she's dead. So recently she's been sleeping up on the porch of the duck coop, right? So she's sleeping with her head off the edge, so it looks like a duck with its head just like hanging down like she died. And I'm like, is she okay? And I'm like, yeah, that's just sugar. She's just like that.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

Yeah, so it's like it's a hard balance to find. And also, like Chrissy, you probably go this through through this too. Like, I'm so in tune with my ducks that like I pick up on everything. Like, in both times that I've told Christy, I feel like something's wrong, but I don't have enough of a red flag symptom to like grab it and run to the vet right now. I was right. And so part of me wants to trust my gut instinct more, but like I also have to balance the fact that I could potentially drive myself insane. And I'm like, Yeah, you know, I'm just gonna I'm gonna try to catch things marginally earlier, but I'm gonna try to keep it within reason still.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Try to be reasonable because like yeah, I've taken sugar to the vet before just to be told she's dramatic. Yeah, like gotten x-rays on this duck just to be told she's dramatic.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Yeah, it's it's tough. I the other thing that I was going through that made it hard to process popcorn's death was we had like a weird predator situation in my big duck flock. Yeah. Um, at this point I think it was a hawk, but since we since we've had a Fisher cat hanging around and I didn't know what actually hurt this waffles or runner duck, I had to lock down our coops and like stress test everything. Now twice because I did it again yesterday because we saw the Fisher cat and it's been a nightmare. Like going back through and re-predator-proofing everything, like that's been the core of my life for the last week.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

And that's really tough when you like see a predator and you're worried about it, it's it becomes like the only thing you can focus on. And it's like, how do I protect my ducks? And even if like you already have a very secure coop, you're like, I need to stress test this, I need to do more. Like, you can you can never feel like you've done enough.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

100%. And the thing is, is no matter how secure you think your coop is, I dare you to go check it again. I dare you, because every single time I can find something, I can find something that changed, I can find something that the weather shifted. I can say, especially with if you have bad winters, I could find something that came loose that just isn't as good anymore. Something that I missed during building. Like yesterday, what I was doing is I was putting all my weight into all of my roofs. So seeing if I could flex it. And I found multiple spots that it was easy. All I had to do was add another three-inch like screw or something and resecure that so that I couldn't flex it. But stuff changes, like screws come loose, stuff gets worn out. So you have to continuously be checking your stuff. And when you have a predator around, I talked about this a little bit in one of my videos yesterday. It's so important that you act immediately. I feel like a lot of people wait to see if it becomes an issue. You have to, you have to beat the predator. You have to be working one step ahead of the predator because once it gets into your coop, you have a severe issue on your hands because then it knows that there's food there. It becomes 20 times more determined. Because what you want is you want the predator to come in, try to get in, and be like, that was kind of a pain. I'm gonna move on. And then it moves on. But if it successfully gets in and it knows that there's an abundance of food in there, then it's gonna say, there's an abundance of food in there. I'm willing to work 20 times harder because I'm gonna get the payout. And so that's why twice now we have been sprinting around our property and like double securing everything. Like everything that I could like tighten up was tighten up, everything that I could resecure was done. It was insane. I called Chrissy at like like 10 o'clock at night. I text her, I'm like, are you awake? Because I need to panic. And we were looking at there was a Fisher cat and a fox now, I believe, both by our coops. Luckily, after really reassessing, I think the thing that was closer to our coop was the fox, which I don't care. Uh, foxes are honestly, I know a lot of people get really worried about foxes, but I view foxes as one of the easiest predators to keep out.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Like, yeah, they're foxes are sneaky, but like standard predator proofing with like hardware cloth and just yes, a wooden coop can generally handle a fox if it's well built.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Yeah, and foxes don't, they're not chewers the same way that like the Fisher cat would be. Like, they're not gonna sit there and chew your coop. They might pressure your coop, they might try to find a gap that they could fit in. They're a much larger animal, they can't fit in through as many gaps. They're definitely gonna chew through chicken wire. And if it's like a really easily chewable material, a fox will definitely get through that. But like chewing wood isn't an activity that a fox does, you know? Like it's not gonna sit there and like chew your wood. So the fox isn't as big of a deal. The fisher cat I've been extremely worried about. So I've been really locking everything down around the concept that the Fisher cat is actively pressing my coops. That's just because I have to act like that, especially since we have the one weird predator situation with waffles that we don't know what happened. Reality is, I think that was a hawk. The hawk didn't come back. I think my geese beat that hawk. I wish I saw this so bad. I wish I was there to witness this. I'm like, this is so cool. Like, this is what I want my geese to do. But so yeah, I'm not worried about the hawk because that's exactly how I want aerial attacks to go. That's one of the reasons I have geese. I expect the hawk to come down and try. And I expect my geese to do what geese do, which is charge it. And hawks dislike that very much. They do not like to be disrupted or messed with during a hunt. So I think the hawk was like, okay, and it dipped and it just left this small, like, because I there was like a three-point talon mark on waffles. Like I could see the three claws, and that looks, it looks like a hawk to me. So I'm moving with that, was it, but I'm treating it like everything was possible. So I secured that entire coop down and 24 hours was awful. And then I have to tell the story. I'm only telling this story on the podcast. I might edit this out. I'm gonna tell the story of me pulling in ducks because it's so funny.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Oh, yeah. What I typed you.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

So I'm on the phone with Chrissy, like giving her these updates in real time because I like just needed to talk. Because so the thing about Didi is Didi loves the birds, but he doesn't love the birds like me and Chrissy love birds. So the only person that I could vet to that would understand my level of stress was Chrissy. So I was so glad you were awake because I was like, he is just not on the same wavelength as me right now. Like, Didi was very much like, okay, they're not gonna get in. And I was like, no, Chrissy's gonna understand that I'm panicking. And so what I did, this is sick, but this is the reality. Okay, and like I hate to say this to people, but like, this is kind of when you have a lot of birds, this is kind of something that you might do, or this might be a good idea for you. Is first of all, I pulled all of the birds out of the coop that I had not tested at all yet. So I tested the main pen enough, but the whites pen I had not ran through yet. Because there wasn't birds in there for a little bit of time because I was doing all the building and switching. So I just hadn't really gotten around to testing it because we had just started like working on moving pen to pen to stress test everything post-winter. So I had not looked that one over at all. So I pulled all birds. Also, that pen is closest to the woods, which makes it like an easy first target if you think about how a predator would come out of the woods. That the main pen for my call ducks is closer to my house. So that's less interesting to predators. Like, that's honestly in a really safe spot. So I went and I pulled all of the birds out of the white pen because I did not trust it. And then I went and I got peanut. And I told Christy, I was like, I'm gonna go get peanut anyway, because if something happened to peanut, I think everybody knows that I would be destroyed. Right. And I said, you have to bring peanut in.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Like, you gotta do what you gotta do so you can get sleep tonight.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

I got peanut. I was like, okay, I'm gonna go get peanut. And then 20 minutes later, I think I texted Christy. I go, okay, all of the weights are in. And then I also got peanut all the mango dumpling. And I like and brought in like all of my favorites from my main pen. And this was so bad. I felt so guilty because I looked at all the rest who I still love, but like I also understood that I had a finite amount of space that I could set up emergently. And I was like, I love you guys. I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

I got that text from you. I was like, wow, it's really clear who the favorites are now. Like, we knew we all know, we all know that Peanut is the favorite, which is so valid, and I totally get it. But once I got the text with the rest of the ducks you brought in, I was like, oh, I see how it is.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Yeah, it was like a triage. I was like, I cannot bring like 30 birds in my house tonight. Like, I just don't have this, I simply don't have the X-pen space, and I can't like set them loose in my basement. Like, honestly, because it would be unsafe for them. Like, I generally would. Because there's like stuff down there they could get into or eat. I don't even know. My basement's disgusting. So I was like, I can't shove them all in there. So I was like, granted, I also knew that this pen, I had stress tested this pen. I wanted to do it one more time, but like I was not super worried that anything was gonna happen to those birds. But I did feel guilty that I had to pull in my favorites. It was mostly so that I could sleep, though, because I still didn't sleep that whole night. Like I was out there for quite a bit of time waiting to see if I could catch this thing. Also, my dogs pissed me off because so I opened the door and heard it screaming, right? And I look at my dogs because my dogs, like people always say, get a livestock gradient dog. My dogs hunt my property. My dogs will kill anything that comes in here. Like they've done it before. They've killed a raccoon, they kill rats all the time. My dogs are good at what they do and they will alert me from inside my house. But for some reason, my dogs were they were in chill mode. They were lounging on the couch, like they were vibing. And so when I got up and I opened the door and I heard it, I yelled, dogs, get out there, get it. Like, go get it. And I yelled for my dogs. I had never seen my dogs move with less urgency. I was like, what is going on with everybody? Like, I was like, my dog got off the couch at like she was like, I was like, no, like get out the meanwhile, in the middle of the night, if I open the door to like, if they're barking at the door, I open the door to let them go get something because that's they'll they'll look out the window and then they'll see something in the yard. Their eyes hate and just their hearing is insane. And they will bark and I open the door and they book it. Like they go for it, you know? And so I was like, what is going on? This is serious right now. They were just like, they were not having it. The minute, granted, the minute they got outside and we heard that thing bark, they went straight for it. Luckily, but at first they were like, they also got out there and they were like, like, what are you freaking out about? I was like, it's right there, like I can see it.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

And so then they went weird. But they scared it off, which is good. I think sometimes dogs can also smell things, like even from in the house. I don't know if this is just me, but like one of my childhood dogs would always like go crazy whenever there was a bear around. And like you can't hear a bear walking through the grass in our front yard. Like it's not making sound. It had to have smelled it.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Yeah, they it's crazy how because even when they're in my house and like barking in the middle of the night to go out, there's always something out there, and I know because of the way they take off, like they take off with such like a direction and they book and they go straight towards the woods. So they definitely have like my indoor dogs do a fairly good job. I would love to have a dog that's like outside all the time that would do this from outside just because I think it's safer. But like it's my German Shepherd is so dog aggressive that I'm so afraid that she would kill it. Like, I don't trust it as of right now to add an LGD. Granted, they do a pretty good job. What I'm actually gonna be doing since it's like nice out is I'm gonna be sleeping with the window open so that I can let my dogs out when because if the window's open, my dogs will definitely know. Right. Because I'll hear it. So I'm gonna be just like leave a window open at night so that my one dog, Moonshine, who's my baby, that's the one that hunts really well. She'll go get it. So I'm not as concerned as of right now. Everything's locked down, everybody slept out there. It's now been multiple nights. Clearly, this thing isn't getting in. And one of the things that I think people need to realize about predators is they are there whether you know it or not. Like a lot of people think that predators just aren't around. They are. It's just they're not getting in, and that's actually a good thing. That's what you want.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

Or people will be like, oh, look, I don't need to predator proof my coop because we don't really have like predators around here. And I'm like, unless you live on like a secluded island that is known for not having any predators, you probably have predators around. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

If you didn't have predators around, you would have you would have no grass, you would have no plant life because the small animal population that grazes those things would be so outrageous. Like I promise you, you have predators around. But yeah, so if you think you don't have predators, you definitely do. The ecosystem does not function without predators. It doesn't matter where you are, it doesn't matter how secure you think you are, unless you live in a cement box with sand. There's stuff hunting on your property. So always be safe, always secure everything down, unless like the only thing I could think of, and even then, you still have hawks. So there's no situation that I can think of where predators aren't a concern.

SPEAKER_00 43:17

There, I'm like 90% sure I went to, I can't remember if it was Asteteak Island or Chinkateak Island in like Virginia, Maryland, and like we were on a tour of the area, and they were like, this island is really cool because there's no natural predators, so that's why there's like lots of I think bunnies or something. And I was like, oh yeah, that's so interesting. And you can only like get to the island, you know, via a bridge. And I guess like one time like a bear crossed the bridge and it was like a whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

But even then you would think hawks would still be there. Yeah. The only example of it that I could think of is New Zealand. But like even then, you still get like aerial predators, you know. But like birds flourish, but there's still some form of predator. There's still some form of like control, like the ecosystem makes that happen. So Like New Zealand is an example where there's no like ground predators. Well, there is now, because we introduced them and we ruined the bird paradise. But like, there's still going to be like some form of predation, whether it be like other predator birds or something like that. There's just always something there. Now, okay, so me and Chrissy are trying to keep this podcast short today. So, but that pretty much covers all of the updates here. We're trying to keep it short because I have so much predator proofing to still do that I gotta get back out there. But we wanted to jump on here because we missed doing this. We I needed to talk to Chrissy truly. And I also wanted to update you guys all in full. So we cannot end this on this depressing note of predators and popcorn dying. So, Chrissy, give us something positive that we can add this on.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

So I'm gonna I'm gonna bring back this baby duck again. And something interesting about this baby duck that I wanted, I'm I'm pretty positive that this baby duck has rhytail. I wanna see so rhytail is when the spine is actually misaligned at the very like end of the tail. So sometimes if you have like rhytail and it's like really bad, like spine misalignment, you're gonna know that they're not gonna like make it from as soon as they hatch. But when it's just like a little, little twisted tail, it's it's very hard to see, but I could see it. I could see it. Yeah, it's just a twisted tail and it doesn't really affect them at all. The only thing there's like very few resources on this at all because it's not very common, it's not something that's like purposely bred for. Some people say that it's it can be genetic and it can also be as a result of improper turning while in the egg, and that's I can almost guarantee you that's what happened here because the power had gone out for overnight, and then the turner didn't turn back on. So I didn't realize until I like it must have been like two or three days later. It's so weird. Like every time I come out here, they're like in the same spot, and like normally I would see the eggs in different spots every time I walk out there. So that's that's on me, but it's hopefully not gonna affect her at all. The only thing is sometimes with females, they could have like egg binding the first time they lay eggs, but so we will hope that doesn't happen. But I I haven't found a lot of sources that have said that has happened to them, so I'm very hopeful. But on a positive note, I have the cutest, sweetest baby duck that is obsessed with me, and I'm obsessed with her, and it makes me happy because so this was not my plan, obviously. I was hatching these for a friend. My plans for hatching this year, I wanted munchkin grandbabies, so I was gonna separate donut, coconut, and pumpkin and s'more because I can tell her eggs apart from the rest of the ducks, and then have marshmallow be the Drake. And I was hoping that they would give me some Ancona-colored babies, and then I would keep some females, and those would be Munchkin's grandbabies, and everything would be good and fine. And I was gonna wait until after the wedding because I didn't want to have to make my pets sit or watch ducklings, and I was like, I want to be able to spend all this time with them and everything. Well, baby duck happened, so that's so cute. Now plans have changed, and I love it because I love this baby.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

So that is all we got for this one on this episode of the Duck Ladies Podcast. Some positive updates, some negative updates, but hopefully all of the chaos is simmering out. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, it was a debriefing episode. I'm sorry we didn't have breed of the week. Me and Chrissy have just not had time to do much of anything. We will get back into all of that next week. Make sure to leave a like and review and let us know how you like the podcast on your favorite place to listen. Don't forget to check out the Duck Ladies Podcast merch. Chrissy is wearing some of it today. Yeah, and we love the mug. I have the mug too, and it's one of my favorites. It's so cute. You get a picture of Mr. Whip and Opiol in our logo. And that is gonna be all we got for this one. Don't forget to follow us at the Duck Ladies Podcast on all of our socials so you can get updates as we go, and also we can let you know when we're not gonna have an episode ready. That's all we got for this one. I hope you guys enjoyed the debriefing episode. Bye, guys.