Chicks, Ducklings, and a Dog Named Caspian

What a week! This week began with the hatching of our first homegrown chicks. Mama is doing a great job mothering them, and we're very excited. There are nine of them, and so far all are healthy and doing well. The very next day we came home from work to find that the ducklings had hatched out as well - thirteen of them! Mama duck is taking extremely good care of them too, and after just a couple of days, they had their first swimming lesson:



All of these babies are quite fun to watch. They're tiny, but they're already learning to act like grown ups. The chicks are learning to scratch and peck, and ducks are swimming pretty well for such little things.

We ended the week with two more acquisitions - a Great Pyrenees named Caspian, and a bantam Old English Game Hen (more on her in a subsequent post). Caspian is two years old, and came from a loving family, but he was, err, strongly disliked by their other Pyr (a female), so he came to live with our goats. We just picked him up yesterday, and he's had a pretty rough 24 hours, I'm sorry to say. He's fairly suspicious of us and runs away when we approach. Our adult doe, Naomi, wants NO part of him being here and does her best not to let him into the barn. On top of all that, it poured rain last night and this morning and the poor guy spent most of that time out in the middle of the yard getting soaked. We knew there would be an adjustment period, and it's only the second day, but we're hoping to make some inroads with him and hoping that Naomi will relax and get used to him. He was really sweet when we met him, and was great in the car coming home, but he's quite anxious, poor thing.

Caspian, A.K.A. "The Bumble"


Now I'm off to deal with the chicken that's residing in my bathtub...