Hard Lessons of Country Life

A few days ago, I returned home from a day out to a stark reminder of the reality of country life.

The farm has been brimming with new life the last few months with lambs, calves, chicks, ducks, and goslings being born. I absolutely love this time of year, even though it’s labour intensive. Seeing the little faces as they pop out of an egg or watching a lamb take its first steps is one of the joys of this life. Cute babies running about the place and swimming in the sink is the stuff of Instagram dreams.

But baby animals must be supervised, even if they have a mother to do it. And more importantly, when they don’t!

Raising animals can be a joyous yet saddening experience. Over the past months, I’ve witnessed the cycle of life and how nature plays her, not always nice, part.

WARNING: This post does talk about death.

So back to the story.

I mentioned in my Instagram stories recently that I was proud of how our mother duck, Lucky, had managed to bring a little duckling into the world. (She’d probably lost ten before that one came home. We don’t know.) Lucky and the other ducks walked the tiny thing around 500m from the dam back to the farmyard and paraded around the yard for us. It was so sweet to watch as she pecked in the paddock with the little duckling at her feet, showing her baby what to do.

A few weeks ago, Gavin had put one of Lucky’s eggs in the incubator, thinking it was a chicken egg. (The size difference is obvious, he must not have had his glasses on ;)) Anyway, just before Lucky returned we had helped a duckling into the world. Ducklings are such amazing creatures. After they’re born they don’t need to eat or drink for up to 48 hours. They survive on the nutrients in the egg yolk they absorb just prior to hatching. We were excited at the possibility of a duckling friend for our incubator-born duckling.

It was not to be.

Pekin ducks are notorious for laying a large clutch of eggs, 90% of which will either not hatch or die sometime shortly after birth. Caring for the ducks is relatively easy but the adults are not good mothers and our Lucky had abandoned her last two ducklings. The hens had raised them.

So, anyway, I returned home to find the little duckling dead on the lawn. Most likely, accidentally squashed by her own mother. The ducks wander about, oblivious to the baby at their feet trying to keep up. They tread on them all the time. Despite the fact Gavin and I have seen it before, I’d done nothing and I was devastated.

When we lose animals I’m prone to sit with them for a while hoping they are simply asleep and will wake up. On finding this little one gone, I also felt dreadful guilt. I had known what might happen and I should have taken the duckling and put it in the brooder as soon as Lucky brought it home.

But I didn’t.

Country life can be sad.

Conversely, a couple of days after this event we were blessed with two adorable Sebastapol goslings. These little geese have bonded to us. They feel like part of our family, mostly because they are so affectionate and follow us everywhere.

I learned a lesson. Whenever they are in the yard with the ‘big kids’ we monitor these two closely. Until they are big enough to look after themselves, I will do it for them. We’ve bandaged their splay legs to help them straighten. We put them on the lawn but the goslings are never left alone.

Watching an animal be born and helping it into the world is one of the joys of life. It makes the difficult parts of country living worth it. We have to protect them too.