Ducks

I love my ducks, but I am fighting a losing battle and Mother Nature is winning. We have lost almost all the baby ducks I bought last November and I don't even want to think how much money I have spent in fighting to keep them alive. Never-ending frozen water buckets, freezing barns, snowstorm after snowstorm - it takes its toll and there is only so much a person can do.

We have put up insulation and put heaters in the barn. The problem with ducks is that they use their feet to regulate their own temperature - that is why they can go into freezing water. Their heart sends warm blood down into their feet, it cools the blood and sends it back into their heart. So, if you put a duck in warm water, it can die of heat stroke (trust me, we found out the hard way!). Therefore, we can't use heated water buckets. So we constantly have to drag fresh water over to the ducks. Then we have had the ducks tried to get into the water buckets, either knocking it over, leaving them without water for the day (without us knowing) or babies getting into the buckets, not being able to get out and drowning, etc., etc., etc. Never-ending problems and what seems like a never-ending winter.

So you begin to think is this just bad luck or a sign that maybe you really shouldn't be raising ducks?? If ducks were so easy to raise, why aren't there more duck farms? Have I just answered my own question??