At the beginning of May we noticed nests popping up all over our banana patches near the house, which is where our mommy ducks prefer to lay their eggs. We assume it feels very safe. The leaves of the banana trees provide good cover from airborne predators like hawks, and the proximity to the house (and to our rescue dog Chandra) helps keep mongoose and stray cats away. In the picture above you’ll see the first two baby ducks that hatched this season.

We found a great new home for these babies with a friend in Ocean View, which is 8 miles away from the farm, and they’ve already been relocated there. They are reported to now be solidly in the “porcupine dinosaur” stage of development, (that is, covered with pin feathers and looking really silly) and should be fully feathered out and able to fly in a few weeks time.

As predicted, within days of moving these babies to their new home, a new set of babies started to hatch. Three yellow babies from three different mommy ducks hatched over the course of a week and a half. All three were placed in protective custody immediately, of course, and we found a great new home for them as well. They’ll be moving to Mountain View, which is a little over an hour away, and they’ll be lovingly cared for by the adult female Muscovy already living there.

And once again, no sooner had we placed those three babies in their travel cage to head to their new home than we had yet another new baby hatch. She is sitting on my chest as I type this and is cute as a button. So far she’s solo, although her mommy duck still has another unhatched egg and there are a couple of other nests that should be close to hatching, so we hope she’ll have some company very soon.

Apparently it’s also baby chicken season. A visitor to the farm left and then returned with a baby chicken about the size of a thimble. She’d found it in a pavement crack at the side of the road and was leaving to return to the mainland that night. Although we don’t have any chickens, we agreed to find it a home. The next day, another farm visitor, this one a local resident, saw the chicken and was instantly smitten, so this is another story with a very happy ending. On the right you’ll see a picture of Tamara, the chicken’s new mommy, cuddling with it before taking it to its new home.