They actually tell you when one gets out!
Yesterday afternoon I was in the yard doing some spring clean up when I noticed the ducks were making a racket. “What are they freaking out about?” I thought and went over to investigate.
Gizmo had some how gotten outside the fence. She was quack quack quacking up and down trying to get back in then unable to figure out how, would go out into the neighbor’s yard, then back to quack quack quack at the fence. The rest of the flock was audibly upset Quack Quack Quack at being separated.
Now would chickens do that? Noooooo….
I called Zora over, and she and I went into the neighbor’s yard. Zora helped me to corner Gizmo against the fence so I could grab her, and carry her back into the safety of their outdoor pen and the rest of her flock. They all settled down immediately once she was back in the group.
One of the many reasons I love my ducks. They care about each other. Makes it harder to accidentally lose one!
And just because a clip of some herding practice this morning. The beauty of video, tells me exactly how many mistakes I made. Poor Zora, putting up with me! This is the first time we’ve practiced with this set up of a ‘course’ I was pleased overall that we could get them around the cone and through the gates!
I do love chickens, but they are such brats sometimes. And their tendency to flap, squawk, and scatter makes them no good for herding. At least not our chickens anyway. I would get ducks, but living in town, they are just too noisy. The chickens do lay some nice eggs though. We are getting about 20 eggs per day at the moment, (yeah we have too many chickens right now,) and selling lots of those eggs. We’ve also been having great fun hatching next year’s layers in the incubator.
That’s a load of eggs! And incubating, such fun!