Most of the sweet little ducklings we’ve received in the last month are now hard to tell apart from the adults. They’re close to fully feathered and have been spending all day down at the pond.

They’ve mastered getting down to the pond and back up to the coop in the evening. It’s just how to get in and out of the coop that they’re still working on. In the morning I have to shoosh them out the chicken door and in the evening I’ve created a sort of shoot with an old gate to guide them back into the door. About half of them did figure out how to get back in on their own last night, before I came out to help. That’s progress. I’ll take it!

The new egg layers we got back in April are now totally integrated with the adults. They spent about a week and a half in a run where they could all see and hear each other but they couldn’t physically interact. Then one morning I opened the gate and released the babies. They were so excited to go out and explore and the adults were so excited to chow down on the chick feed that they mostly seemed to ignore each other. Interactions have been pretty peaceable ever since.

We did go ahead and order two dozen Cornish Cross meat birds. They came home May 16 as tiny little yellow fluff balls.

When I went to check on them that evening I told my husband – Well they’re not known to be real active birds. Mostly they just eat and put on weight for 8-10 weeks until they reach harvest weight. They’re already well on track with their habits. There’s a lot of napping and eating going on in their brooder.

Oliver’s been having fun checking on the new birds and holding babies. Look how teensy this one is in his hand!

But just like the ducklings, it won’t be long until I’m saying – Man, they grow up so quickly!