The Anconas are not quite 2 months old now, but goodness how they've changed. The two White Chinese geese are named Merry and Pippin (We have no idea if they are male or female, but what characters they are!) and the ducks that the children have claimed as their "own" all have names, but I can never remember them. They still have a few tufts of down here and there, but they are pretty much feathered out now. These shots were taken the day we installed their little pond. We put in a plastic garden "pond" and set it about halfway into the ground. We left the top level above ground because we wanted to raise the water level and install a valve for draining off the poop-filled water into the garden (just on the other side of the fence) for fertilization uses (NOT for pouring directly onto greens or other edible plant parts). This neat idea is not ours, by any means, but we hope it will work well for us.
I am going to plant irises (or maybe Job's tears) around the pond perimeter as soon as I get the chance. The floating green you see on the water is a few handfuls of Azola and duckweed thrown in to tempt them into the water for the first time, as they were not quite sure about the whole thing (this stuff is serious duck candy). We are growing these two fast growing water plants in a couple of tanks (out of their reach) to throw into the little pond as a supplement to what they forage and are fed. We are not planning on keeping all of the ducks and will probably try to maintain a small flock of only 7 or 8, so the pond will not always be so crowded.
I think they look pretty happy, don't you? :)
