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Our Life at Denbury Farm Blog 25th October 2017

 
 
Although the cull has officially finished we are still checking around the farm area just to make sure. After eight weeks non stop it is difficult to believe it has finished. I am also concerned that maybe, although unlikely there are numbers that have to be made up.
 
Yesterday afternoon as we were about to do the afternoon feed when one of our Muscovy ducks, or should I say refugee Muscovy with a single newly hatched duckling in tow, making hell of a noise and squawking coming towards us. Muscovy ducks wouldn’t be the best mothers in the world. It wouldn’t be unusual for them to walk away and leave their ducklings, but being newly hatched and squawking I called Mrs Farmer to help look incase she has abandoned others. She had and by the direction of the noise she had left them twenty five feet in the air in the peak of the barn roof, in a barn owl nest box, the only way to get to them was by a long ladder. Not being a lover of heights it was Mrs Farmers job to rescue the ducklings. 
 
What a stupid place to nest and it wouldn’t be the first time. The ducking’s become kamikaze pilots when they leave their barn owl nest box, jumping off from the nest box platform and dropping rather than floating down one after the other, landing with a thud, surprisingly doing them no harm at all. When they hatched this time the one walking towards us with the duck must have hatched a lot earlier than the rest, the duck thinking the other eggs were not going to. When Mrs Farmer climbed to rescue them they hadn’t made the eighteen inch climb to get to the platform, so it was just as well that she heard them calling, for seven more ducklings in the owl box.
 
Safe in a bucket they were lowered down and reunited with their mum. This morning there was a duckling missing that was found by Mrs Farmer. It was a little weak and finding it a bit hard to walk. She kept it in her hoodie pocket until strong and went to find its mum who by this time had decided to take the day old ducklings on a route march in the horses field, for a hundred meters and still going, up hill at that. They must have been exhausted. there was another missing, so we are not holding our breath to see how many survive.