Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

The photos below show the incredible growth in our ducklings. The first photo is of Pear's brood taken when they were just two days old and the second is of three of them today at exactly five weeks old. Some things are the same: the eye stripe remains, plus the paler chests compared to the bodies, but the range of colours starting to now show are amazing: blues, greens, blacks, whites!! Ducklings grow much faster than chicks. A day old duckling weighs around 50g. Five weeks later and some of our ducklings are a whopping 1250g. Our Orpington chicks weighed around 20g when they were born. They are now four and a half weeks old, so a few days younger than our ducklings but their weight is just 245g. Even our youngest turkeys at seven weeks old are only 730g!! Turkeys end up being bigger and weighing more than the Muscovies but they grow a lot slower. All quite amazing!!
We had huge fun tonight watching the ducklings eat the grass seeds from some long grass by the polytunnel and then they discovered our very soggy compost heap (it has been another day of very heavy downpours) and a happy half hour was spent 'dabbling' in the soggy straw finding a whole heap of minibeasts to eat.
Slightly less happy news is the fact that one of our white turkeys has been eaten by a badger. An internal gate in the barn was slightly left open the night before last so our theory is that s/he got out VERY early whilst the badger was still around. The remains were found on the footpath outside our paddock very close to where we know the badger goes in and out PLUS we see him at night at the moment... AND our broody with the four Leghorn cross chicks has vanished along with two of her brood. They disappeared the same morning. We are a little bemused by this one because the previous night 'mum' had abandoned her chicks and returned to the main poultry house. We put her back with her chicks straight away and then the following day they disappeared!!! We have a vain hope she is sitting on a clutch of eggs somewhere but to have taken two chicks with her would be unusual! The reality is probably not so good!!
Finally, no news about Onion - the results are delayed!!!!