Baby Ducks and Geese Arrive

Our ducks arrived the morning of Joshua's' fourth birthday! Here they are getting settled.

All tuckered out.

Can you count them?

All piled up.

All fourteen, what wait a minute there are 15 and we ordered 14. We have a surprise! We never counted them, and a couple of days later while taking individual pictures Josh spotted a surprise! We had an extra. Read below to find out which one...

And here it is we have an extra
Welsh Harlequin, the sex is a surprise as we had all of ours sexed(they come with color coded leg bands) and this one was band-less. So we have another surprise waiting to see if we have male or female.

I love how I caught the water drip from its beak in this one!

Adults

Buff Orpington Ducks
Adults Below

Khaki Campbell

Adult Drake

Flip, Flop,and Flap our
Cayuga
Adult Below

Ginger(female), and Garlic(male) our
Buff Geese

Adult
Why so many ducks and why geese you might ask? Well we have a pond about 1 1/2 acres in size. We have always enjoyed seeing the wild ducks that have come through but were never able to keep any of our own due to the dogs. Our yard now has an electric fence to keep the dogs away and we have done our best to train them these are pets and not food.(been successful so far!) We also have a very aggressive weed growing along the banks possibly called "duck weed" looks like ivy that grows in water. We went to our local "farm store" to find a poison to kill it. Upon talking to one of their workers he tells us that the only thing they know of to kill this is $700 a quart! And he had the same problem except for his pond was completely taken over by it. He purchased a dozen ducks and they had it gone in a month. So we ended up getting the 2 Pekin Ducks, after being at the pond only a week they had taken care of a three foot span! Until one of our many predators needed dinner. :( We began thinking the two WHITE ducks didn't have much of a chance being so bright and alone. Maybe safety in numbers we thought. And geese are known to notice things out of the ordinary making them more protective. I was advised that you should also get more than you think you want because losses happen. Then you really should have 1 male per 3 females. In the end we have 18 ducks,and 12 chickens making it an even 30 birds! WOW! This is our summer project as I call it. It is a lot of work but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything nor would the kids. We have enjoyed it as a family and everyone even quests have even pitched in to help out!
We purchased 1 drake per 2 females in the ducks, and 1 gander/1 goose in the geese category. I have pictured our babies first and last adult pictures(most from Metzer Farms)to show what they will look like fully grown. The geese are by far my favorite with amazing personalities! I can not say enough about the Farm we ordered them from. Their site is a wealth of information making it very easy to choose what would be best for our family. There is also a level of fun as they have a contest if you find any mistakes on the site the award $20 gift certificate per legit typo or mistake. We ended up getting all of these babies free due to Joshs' research. Free or not we would have ordered from them anyway and will in the future as well. They also have excellent customer service. For anyone looking for poultry I would definitely recommend Metzer Farms!
http://www.metzerfarms.com/index.cfm?CustID=106209
Thanks Metzer Farms for these amazing healthy birds!
Ps we only have a few names so far, feel free to offer suggestions!