The oldest Daughter was quite upset as the Turkeys were her choice in critters and she really did love them. Thankfully our kids have adjusted to having to deal with the loss of animals and she did over come it and is already planning next years try again at turkeys. And as much as I worried about them being nasty and mean as everyone had told me they would be they were not. As you see this one is literally waiting at our front door for me to come out so they could follow me around. They were like our little shadows and I think we will all miss them.
Turkeys were not our only loss in critters so far this fall. We had pigs that have since become dinner and we had meat bird chickens which have also joined the pigs in the freezer. But one unexpected set of critter deaths came in the form of 10 ducklings. Yes ducklings in fall, one this springs duckling apparently grew up quite fast and managed to hatch our 10 ducks in October!?! Not good timing for babies to born where we live but we were going to let her try to raise them. By no means was she not trying to raise them as their death was not her fault. When we first discovered the dead ones (at 1day old) we assumed a weasel or something had attacked them in the night as they all had the same damage by the neck area. We were able to get two of them back to good health and back to their mom to try again but unfortunately for them they did not survive either. These two were also attacked but this time as the last one was being destroyed the Hubby happened to be close enough to see our other lone male duck attacking them and they were just too tiny to survive.
All of this means one thing we are going to be heading into winter very soon. The death of the critters is sad but on the other hand it is just the same as last year with just our chickens, goats and 3 adult ducks so perhaps next year will turn out better for an increase of critters here?
