About ten weeks ago, we became the owners of three Pekin ducks, two females and one male!

We had visions of fresh eggs and baby chicks, and were delighted that despite being told it would likely take 2 – 4 weeks for them to settle in and start laying again, one of them began laying on the third day. It was so exciting to see that first egg there!

Despite being very happy in their new surroundings, one of the females died just nine days later. She had come to us with a cut next to her eye that we understood from the seller was mostly healed, but it became infected and though we put antibiotic cream on it, it was too little, too late.

My son told me he didn’t think she was feeling well – less than a half hour later I found her laying beak down in the coop, dead.

I knew raising animals would mean encountering the life and death cycle close up, but I wasn’t expecting it so soon.

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Prior to this, we had begun to gather the eggs and set them aside, hoping we could incubate them. We were fortunate to have a neighbor who raises birds who had some room left in his incubator, and agreed to add our seven eggs to his batch. Duck eggs have a four week incubation period and we waited eagerly for the hatch.

The person who had the incubator told the boys after a couple of weeks that it looked like only five of our eggs would hatch. That sounded like a good number, though!

However, we had a massive unseasonal heatwave, and there was an incubator failure as a result. Out of all of those eggs, just one adorable little duckling hatched.

She was dubbed Pineapple, and spent her first day being held non-stop, her first night sleeping snuggled on ds14, and spent the next day once again mostly being held – she was very content.

The second night we put her in her box lined with straw inside the bedroom, not knowing that even though it was so warm she still needed a heat lamp. (When we hatched ducklings in the US we didn’t use a heat lamp and they all survived, both times – and the weather was much cooler than here.)

They found her dead in the morning. It was very, very sad.

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While we were waiting for the duck eggs to hatch, my twelve year old son began asking me if he could buy quail to raise. The seller of the ducks had some other fowl, among them quail, and when we were there for the ducks we chatted about them. This son had been with me and the conversation he listened to ignited an interest.

I told him he had to build a coop for them before we could get any. He had already built the coop for the ducks with ds14, and so he began collecting scrap wood and materials.

Once the coop was built, off we went last week to buy some quail. He had money for two females and a male, but the seller told him he needed a higher ratio of females to males. When the seller heard about our duck’s untimely demise, he said he would give us the quail that my son was interested in as compensation. My son was very excited about to get five females and one male!

The quail have been doing really well. They’re fun to watch, and surprised us by starting to lay eggs just a week after we got them, when they were only six weeks old. Ds12 started collecting eggs to incubate.

(After he did this, he made the eggs available for us to eat – the last couple of Shabbosim, he boiled a bunch of them and we enjoyed the tiny delicacies for shalosh seudos.)

He began learning about heat lamps and buying materials to build his own warmer for when his eggs hatched.

Before long, the first egg hatched! So exciting! But the tiny chick had a leg injury and couldn’t stand or sit upright.

Ds12 was very anxious about this, and began building a special seat that would keep the chick upright and allow him to eat and drink without needing to move. He put the chick in the special warmer that night to make sure it would stay warm.

In the morning, it was dead.

The next day the second egg hatched. This one was totally healthy and looked great. Ds was so much more relaxed and enjoyed this baby chick. He taught it to eat and drink, held it throughout the day and put it in the warmer at night.

He told me this quail was going to make it because it was doing so well.

A day or two later, his older brother peeked in the warmer and noticed it wasn’t looking good. Ds12 rushed to take it out, and stroked it repeatedly, dipping its beak in water and food.

It was looking stronger – and then moments later died in his hand.

He was devastated and began sobbing.

There have definitely been some lessons along the way, and I’m not going to wax poetic about them. It’s been hard.

As a parent, my role has been to support his interest, then hold space for the feelings of overwhelm, discouragement and sadness that have come up. After the second chick died in his hands, he told me, crying, that he wasn’t going to raise any more birds if they were all going to die.

I didn’t tell him it would all be okay or attempt to convince him of why it wasn’t a big deal. It was a very big deal for him. As a parent, it’s hard to see your child’s pain and you want to take it away. It comes from such a good place in us! But it invalidates a child’s experience to do that. Believe me, I so much wanted to reassure and soothe him.

Then the next two quail eggs hatched. Again, one had a leg injury and one was healthy. After the first quail chick died, I read about how to help a baby quail do physical therapy and told ds about it, so he went out to find a cup that would be the right size for this. Even though the cup he bought wasn’t quite the right size, the chick is walking around much better.

And this time, the two little chicks have not only warmth, light, food, water and conscientious care, but they have each other, and that makes a huge difference. (He thinks the second chick died of loneliness.) They are now six days old and both are doing well. Whew!

(Edited to add: a few days after I wrote this, he left the chicks in the care of his brother for two days when he went to Jerusalem to do bar mitzva shopping. On the first afternoon he was gone, one of the chicks died. When he got home he bought a week old chicken chick to keep his quail chick company so he wouldn’t be lonely.

A few days later, our dog got into the warmer – my son had closed the door to the room they were in but it hadn’t clicked shut. He found the chicken chick injured on the floor and the quail chick gone. We searched everywhere, and then I found it dead on the floor in a different room. I went to get my husband to give some emotional support to my son, who was very emotional. When I got upstairs again, my son told me in relief that the chick was alive but must have fainted from fright. The saga continues….)

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Last week we got two more female ducks. I did this to improve the plight of the lone remaining female duck, who has the unenviable role of being the sole object of the male’s amorous attention. I’ve been looking to buy mature female Pekins, but without success. I spoke to someone who raises Pekins who suggested getting female muscovies to solve the problem, which are easy to find and a lot cheaper.

The very next day my boys went to pick out a couple from someone local who sells them. So easy. And kind of ironic, since I was adamant I didn’t want muscovies! They have different benefits than the Pekins, which after a couple of months of having ducks, now seem more significant. (A big one: muscovies incubate their own eggs.)

Ds11 has been telling me that he wants to raise some kind of animal (he asked about having a goat, to which I said absolutely not! – but hey, it’s good he felt he could ask!). Since via the unexpected refund for the first duck I ended up funding the quail for ds12, I offered these to ds11. He was quite pleased.

As for why I got ducks to start with, I’ll have to write another post about that. But a nice perk is starting my day sitting outside, watching them. So relaxing!

Avivah