Clementine is our two year old Ancona duck. She’s solitary now– a neighborhood dog killed her buddy Ruby Jean a few months ago.
Ducks are very social little critters and, because she’s alone now, Clementine wants badly to be buddies with the chickens.
Although Clemmie is at the bottom of the chicken pecking order, she’ll hang out with them whenever possible. In fact, the first thing she does each morning when let out of her pen is to run/waddle down the hill to the chicken run and call them out of the coop to socialize.
Here’s a video of a typical morning.
Clementine has a nice pen. It has a run and a small house at one end. It’s so solidly constructed that I doubt a bear could get in. The house is full of nice straw bedding so that she’ll be comfortable and lay her eggs there.
We got her and Ruby in the fall when they were young, and they both started laying in the spring, as advertised. They laid regularly, first thing in the mornings, right in their house. Even after Ruby was killed, Clemmie did that for a couple of months but then got adventurous and started laying here and there– especially under a rock down in the branch.
Since then you never really know where she’ll lay next. Now some of her spots are so secret we can’t find her eggs.
But she went through a phase for several days where she laid her eggs in one of my utility grow bags I have around the property for special planting projects.
I think she was trying to raise eggplant.
I know, I know. But I couldn’t resist!
Sigh.
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