Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

We have spent most of today counting!!! As we went down to the smallholding to let everything out for the day, we did a quick count as to how many 'young animals' we currently have... here goes: four lambs, five pygmy kids, six dairy kids, four baby rabbits, 33 chicken chicks, 21 turkey chicks and 29 Muscovy ducklings!! The mathematicians amongst you will have been adding these up as you read them... and hopefully got to a grand total of... ONE HUNDRED AND TWO!!! Wow!!
After the sadness of losing one of our turkey chicks yesterday, we were a little anxious today and took every opportunity to count all the youngsters that were out and about. The ducklings made this virtually impossible however as they kept swopping between mums!! This can be quite normal for ducks apparently, as unlike chickens they don't seem to be as aware of the actual ducklings they have hatched. They will lead their ducklings to food and water and away from danger but then it seems it is up to the ducklings to keep up with their mum, rather than the duck taking responsibility for a set number of individuals. The question that has to be asked is can Muscovy ducks count? And the answer has to be 'no'! At times today, one of the mums might have 18 and the other the remaining 10 and for the one with 10, there was no sign of distress or trying to look for any that were missing!
Give yourself a pat on the back if you are now asking why we suddenly only have 28 ducklings, not 29 as mentioned in the count above (18 + 10)?? No, we didn't lose one. Unfortunately one little chap(ess) from Orange's hatch is very small and has found it really hard to keep up with the others! We had it inside for a while but popped it back with mum in the evening! More on him/her tomorrow!!
But back to our counting: it is quite easy (ish) to count how many ducklings there are in each of the two pictures below but not quite so easy when they are all moving. Plus of course they are all virtually identical! The size difference between the two sets is not that great either, even though there are five days between them. The good news is that we started the day with 29 and ended it with 29 and the numbers were all as they should be for all the chicks as well!! Phew!!!