NOT!!
Thursday, 14th January – 5.15 pm and the ducks are not in bed. I can see them swimming about on the pond in our neighbours field.
Usually they are in bed at this stage.
Back into the house and gave them another 10 minutes. 5.30 pm still not in.
5.40 pm don the wellies again, and discover half of the ducks are still swimming about in the pond, the other half are huddled in a tight group at the edge.
Back to the kitchen to call in help.
Time to go and try to herd them back to their respective sheds. Climb over fences to, plod through our stream – this is the moment I discover one of my wellies is leaking![when else] – over another fence and into a sodden field.
We get 5 of the muscovy babies (teenagers now) back on the right side of the fence. So I’m left guarding them to make sure they don’t head back to pond while Alfie tries to get the remainder out of the pond. By the way, I’m standing in the stream at this stage… yes, still in the leaking wellington. And in total darkness as Alfie has the torch.
And then it starts to snow!
Can it get any worse?
Alfie makes valiant attempts to get the swimming ducks out of the pond but to no avail. He’s on one side, they on the other. He moves around, they move to the other side several times. In fact … stalemate.
Meanwhile I try to ‘herd’ the 5 charges I have back towards their shed. Pitch dark, uneven ground…. yes, I end up falling into stream.
At least I am now uniformly wet on my lower half.
My 5 charges who normally duck under the fence (excuse the pun!) at the edge of our lawn, have no intention of doing this now. So one by one I had to lift them and practically throw them over the fence.
Finally we are making progress towards the shed as the front house light is on. Then we hit another stumbling block …. the yard is dark. Why does the sensor light never come on when you want it? Eventually the light comes on, and we manage to walk them extremely slowly up the yard to their shed.
We’ve had to abandon efforts 6.45 pm of trying to get the others off the pond.
So folks it is now time for prayers that they survive the night.
Needless to say there are no illuminating photos of this.
A Year In Redwood 
Oh dear. I’ve only once hdd to go and rescue our chickens in the dark. On a very windy night, some debris had blown across the entrance to their house and we didn’t notice until we went to shut the door. It was raining too, so it was already late when we got out there only to discover we were hen-free. After much searching we discovered most of them in the hedge… of course right amongst the blackthorn and brambles. I climbed in and extracted them, but we were still missing one. Determined not to leave her out, we searched and searched and finally discovered her huddled behind their house in a most inaccessible location and refusing to move despite all incentives. Finally I had to crawl in to extract her. All was well in the end, but we were soaked and I was severely scratched… the things we do for poultry. Hope yours survived the night.
Oh I remember reading that story when it happened to you! The things we do for our birds! I’ve had to chase up hens and turkeys before, but this was the first time the ducks have been difficult.
I do hope they made it. I remember this problem well from my duck keeping days, which were, alas, ended by some well meaning animal rights protestors releasing mink from a fur farm. Our eventual solution was to train our collie to swim out round them and herd them in like that – she was good with turkeys too
They made it. What a clever dog you have. When I did one of my late night patrols last night, I brought one of our dogs with me who went off on a mission of his own, leaving me watching the ducks swimming on pond with fox prowling the rim!!!
Had alas – Pepsy is long gone wherever good dogs go. As are my farming days. I don’t even have hens at the moment after a neighbour’s husky ate the nest box off the ark. The repaired version will have fine mesh wire on all surfaces. It hadn’t occurred to us that anything would chew its way through 3/4 inch pressure treated timber. I hope you find a way of persuading the ducks to stay in a less vulnerable situation.
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