Ducks!

Living dangerously by choosing to have three, Youngest selected his ducks last evening. He is taking a "Fancy Ducks" project  to the county fair, and as our ducks suffered from death this winter, he needed to find his show ducks. One of our high school 4-H'ers let his duck sit on her eggs last year. He suspected he would get a few ducks, and could take a pair to the fair this June. Plenty (20+) hatched. Unfortunately, as nature seems to choose in such cases, most are males. But, Youngest phoned him this winter, and asked if he could purchase a few ducks and pick them up in the spring when the danger of duck mauling was slightly lessened (by our trapping efforts). So, last evening we detached the horse trailer from Blondie and bumped over to their house to scoop up three crazed ducks and transport them to their new home. They are Khaki Campbells. They look like this:

Right now, they are housed in a cage, inside another, bigger cage for added protection. We will leave them there for a few days, until they are familiar with their new digs, then let them out!  They will be very excited to enjoy the pool.
The danger factor comes in for the ducks, well, by being ducks. Defenses are very poor. All manner of predators like duck. Even the Henry (our gander/dinosaur) is a threat, as he has been known- or perhaps it was Rosebud (our other gander/dinosaur now living with my parents) to sit on the ducks and scalp them, peeling their skin right off thier skulls and leaving it flapping. Did I mention the geese are aggressive? I sew the scalp back on the duck, and it leaves a scar, but all have survived this assault thus far, and it has been a few springs since this has happened. This may be because the ducks wised up, or it may be because the ganders matured. I hope it is the latter, as if it is the former, I have newbie ducks ripe for the scalping. The danger comes in for Youngest, in that you need a pen of two to show, and he has but three ducks. Dum dum dum dum daaahhh!
Youngest was up early, and came bounding into my room to ask if he should go check on his ducks now. Middlest had already been up there, and assured me they were all still alive. So, off Youngest went to check food and water. He thinks they are getting used to him. He'll be discouraged when we let them out of their cage and they only want to stay far, far away. Previously, we've raised our ducks from fuzzy little ducklings. Last set of ducks were Cayugas.
Fuzzy little Cayuga ducklings look like this:

They get held, a lot. And then, they're pretty friendly little things. But if you let them be raised by their mommas, they aren't as complacent around the human beings.
So, Youngest has some taming, and some naming to do! The naming should be interesting...