Our Pet Ducks

Duck FAQ

Ducks Photo Album

A real "adventure": raising and living with these two new "guests" of our garden (and sometime of our home!) has been a difficult, toilsome, rewarding and, at times, incredibly funny task! In this page we are trying to share with any other interested people our ongoing experience, hoping to help or, at least, amuse!

New-born "babies"

All began at the end of July 1997: an original "birthday gift" for V., we bought two one-week-old ducklings, with absolutely no previous knowledge about the right way of "managing" them. They were simply so small, cute, and tender, and fluffy yellow balls, that when you looked at them you could not resist the urge to caress and fondle them, possibly taking them in your hand, and speaking silly baby words to them!!!

A baby duck is capable of creating a remarkable amount of havoc in anything it comes into contact with... So August 2nd, 1997 is the official date of entry in our garden of these nice "aliens"! They had to be nicknamed somehow: V. chose for them the "official" names of Clotilde and Pio Pis, from the characters (respectively feminine and masculine) of a strange and beautiful book, "Il destino si chiama Clotilde", by G.Guareschi. You must realize that it is absolutely impossible to discern the sex of ducklings: and they were so exactly alike, that we could distinguish them only through their behaviour: the one that aggressively pecked your hand, we thought was a male, and was Pio Pis; the other we called Clotilde (female) because of her somewhat milder temper. The collective "familiar" name rapidly become "Cot-Cot", due to their typical call sound.

We built a small enclosure, to protect them from cats and other animals, complete with a wood "home", and with a door, where they would obediently retire at sunset, and "swimming-pool", to drink and swim (you cannot possibly overstate the real love of ducks of any age toward water...!). They were so small that they could bathe and swim around in a simple plastic food-container filled with water!

We fed them with maize meal, wetted, and mixed with various green salad leaves, minced very small, and they were fond of this kind of mash. At the same time, fearing our ignorance of the subject, we rushed to search a book about raising ducks in the biggest bookshop of the town..., only to discover that it had to be ordered, loosing other time. For Italian readers, if you are interested, it is the book [2].

Disease and Recovery

Everything went well until August 13th! One evening, when Claudio came back from work, Pio Pis was strangely silent and motionless, while Clotilde peeped to the world her desperation, obtaining no answer from him (small birds continuously check each other's awareness peeping unendingly). We tried to force Pio to eat and drink, only to discover, to our despair, that he could not stand! A veterinary was called, and diagnosed a polineuritis induced by lack of B-vitamin, probably fault of inadequate food supplied from us! Beside this, he explained what later we would read in the books, that is that very young ducklings (under 4 - 5 weeks old), if their mother duck is not there to keep them under the wings, should be kept in a controlled temperature environment, usually under an infrared lamp. He made at once a B-vitamin injection, and advised us to force-feed with protein rich food the poor Pio, and also Clotilde!

We had two or three frantic days, looking for the prescribed medicines (August 14th and 15th is not the best time to be looking for open veterinary pharmacies in Italy!), and trying to feed our ducklings with eggs, mozzarella cheese, and baby-food! And we had to keep them inside the house, to avoid night temperature falls: bottle of warm water and other miscellaneous devices were used to warm them; since they usually did not want to eat what we thought good for them, we had to force the food in their beak: and both of us (that is, us and the ducklings) came out of this completely soiled with food! So they had to be bathed and cleaned, in the kitchen washbasin...and this, they liked very much!!!

Daffy Duck Many other moving or funny anecdotes could be remembered of that period, and one deserves mention: during Pio Pis recovery, at first we thought better to separate the two ducklings, keeping Clotilde in the garden, while Pio Pis was inside the house, in order to have warm and food all for himself. In one instance, he peeped so loud and intensely his loneliness, that Clotilde managed to escape their enclosure, and came to his rescue!!! We still do not understand how she succeeded in this, by night, and passing in the darkness through a completely unknown garden! Suffice it to say that in about one week Pio had completely recovered, and everything was again under control.

Youth

At the end of August, Pio and Clo began to roam freely the whole garden, exploring its every recess, with special attention to the small pond (2 square meters!!). They began to eat almost everything, provided you cut it, if necessary, in small pieces (pears, apples, snails, tomatoes, cookies, chicory, bread, boiled eggs, cheese, lettuce, ...). A new behavioural pattern was started: they did not accepted "usual" habits, like that of "going to bed" in the evening inside their "home": in other words, they claimed their autonomy!

You would not believe the speed of growth of ducklings in this period of their life! They almost literally grow under your eyes, and can double their size in a matter of two weeks: so, the original "home" didn't fit anymore. And a lot of hard work (and money) went in the design and building of a brand-new luxury ducks-home, made of painted wood, with insulated walls, moving windows, sliding doors for easy cleaning and maintenance, pivoting double-use door/entry ladder, complete with electrical internal lighting and heating, and a timer to turn them on and off...(you can see it in the background of some photographs).

Believe it or not, our friends, right from the beginning, have never used this wonderful facility, designed along the best guidelines we could find in the books, without a firm invitation from our side: at the point that, today, they only go inside because we supply them food in this "house"!

Anyway, they become more and more confident, always looking for human company, and developed a special fondness for tomatoes, that they eat avidly directly from one's hands. When free to do it, they easily come up to the doorstep, and peck the glass, in order to beg their favourite morsel! We have learned them to jump, in order to reach the food in our hand: and they are unbelievably funny at this!!!

If you own pet animals, you know to which extent one goes in order to please them, and make them happy; since we had to decide to keep them away from our small ornamental garden pond, after two instances when they played havoc with every vegetal and animal life in it, we felt a bit guilty of depriving our little friends of a place where to swim and bathe: and so we bought one of those small inflatable swimming pools for the children...our ducks simply loved it! It is impossible to describe how funny it is to look two ducks happily bathing and feasting: at the end, almost half of the water has been thrown out on the surrounding grass!!! Here you can see them sleeping while floating in the mini-swimming pool.

Maturity

At this point it was already clear (by our readings) that we owned a couple of "Pekin ducks", one of the common fowls in Italian farms: they have white-yellow feathers, and the only distinction between the male and female is a curl on the tail of the male. On November 5th, 1997, we noticed for the first time that Clotilde (until then distinguished only by her less "peckier" attitude) was developing a small, beautiful feathery curl on the tail! In a few days it evolved completely, and we were forced to admit that our initial sex guess was wrong: yes, we owned a "couple", but the he was really a she, and vice-versa!!! Anyway, since then on, we kept the names we had chosen, simply changing Clotilde into Clotildone, that in Italian conveys a more masculine impression...

They accept to be cuddled, but while Pio Pis is more tolerant of human contact, Clotildone will never completely accept it... The patterns of behaviour that we had got used to were slowly changing, possibly due to the emerging sexual identity of the animals (the beginning of December '97 was the first time we could observe some clearly sexual intercourse between them, during the bathing rite). While for example during their infancy they used to rest very close one another, now they preferred to stay a bit more apart, all the same doing, as usual, almost the same activities (eating, browsing, grazing, bathing, sleeping) in the same time. Their interest for human company was, if any, only augmented, and, when free, they follow you like little dogs! But Clotildone, the male, was exhibiting what we had to admit was jealousy of us, probably identified with potential rivals in love (?): anyway, he "protected" Pio Pis effectively preventing him to come too close to us, even when we were distributing food!

Winter has passed, snow has covered our garden, now finally spring has come, and all the time our ducks have arrogantly ignored our skilfully built heated "duck-house", preferring to it a refuge they have found under a thick shrub...; the baby swimming pool had to be substituted by a strong plastic circular "bathtub" complete with drainage facilities (if you are thinking to a romantic image of elegant ducks swimming in a clear, limpid and crystal water, well, forget it! after a few hours two ducks can efficiently soil about 100 litres of water, and you have to devise some way to get rid of it!!!). The garden has been divided in two by a low net: one part, the farthest from the house, is "owned" by Clotildone and Pio Pis, the other is reserved to us, and our plants and ornamental pond: and they are allowed to roam freely in this last part only under direct (and strict) human control, due to their propensity to eat anything green, and to throw themselves into any water they can put their "hands" on!

Difficult relationships

January, 18th, 1998, we could witness for the first time a new, funny (if annoying), and surprising "behavioural module" of the two: during the usual (and ritual) food distribution, one time when they were "free", Clotildone, the male, much to our surprise, took the neck feathers of Pio Pis in his beak, and, holding her in this unusual way (remembering an human bringing home a disobedient child by his ear!), pushed her away from us, all through the garden, up to the enclosure where they usually live, and after this run to us as if saying "ok, she's had her share, and now let's go on with the show..."!!! She did not protest in any way, and slowly came back after him, but did not dare anymore to come to feed from our hands, also because when she tried, the scene repeated itself! If it weren’t so annoying to see this blatant egoism, all this antics would have been incredibly funny!

This episode was only the first time; it is quite common today. Since then on, we had to convince ourselves, also by reading [4], that a certain fraction of aggressiveness is inevitable between them: after all, the peck-order is a well-known phenomenon! So we accepted the facts, and simply went on, trying to encourage the poor Pio Pis to have his share of food, water bathing, and caresses (they love human interaction, probably more than the food itself), notwithstanding Clotildone!

This and other clues have convinced us that they are not a "happy couple" and we are planning to give them company, possibly in June 1998. Every time they receive some food from us, or even are grazing alone, if Pio Pis takes something under his eyes, she is punished by Clotildone with a gentle "symbolic" peck on its back or tail: if the food she manages to swallow is particularly tasty or abundant (e.g. ... a snail!), there is an extremely funny runaway, sometime lasting up to half a minute, through the whole area available to them.

The result of all this is that our two feathered friends evolved two very different tempers: Pio Pis, the female, is surely the most intelligent, brave and swift (as could be seen during the first month of her life), but have been somewhat hindered and diminished by the selfish Clotildone, and now exhibits a forced shyness, always staying somewhat behind, always eating only what is directly offered to her, bathing only when his "husband" has finished, and so on! Clotildone's only luck is that of having been born a male... we love him, because we have seen him growing from a yellow peeping ball to the egoist shining white superbly beautiful animal of today, but he would be, by human standards, really annoying and disagreeable: he is the prototypical "all-for-myself" and "I'm-the-best-of-all" type.

Well' that's it! Even while I am writing I can see our two guests, absolutely unconscious of the fact that they are going on-line, looking at me through the window, and trying to catch every minimal motion inside the house (yes, they are extremely curious and inquisitive, and when someone is at home, they could even stop eating to observe him going here and there... must be a sort of reciprocal imprinting!).

Claudio Pedrazzi, Bologna, Italy, May 1998

I wish to leave the passage above "as it is", because it is a sincere "snapshot" of the best period of our life with the ducks. Sadly, on February, 10th, 1999, Pio Pis has left us, going to the heaven of ducks, where, I am sure, she will find no egoist and aggressive male, and a lot of water and tomatoes. The extreme cold and snow of the winter 1998-1999 was too much for her, which was always the weaker of the two. After some thought, we have decided together not to find a new mate for Clotildone: we simply do not want to see again the abuses and the violence that a male duck can inflict to his mate; we don't care if it is the instinct that drives him, we cannot stand it. A few months after the departure of Pio Pis, a new "friend" entered into our lives, and adopted us, filling in part the feeling of emptiness that Pio left behind. Ciao Pio Pis, we have loved you a lot.

If you are not in a hurry, you can browse our Ducks Photo Album: every page contains from four to six pictures only, in order to keep the loading time low: some of them are really funny!.

To hear or save a longer version of this page sound background, click here: cotcot.wav (316K)

This site attracts a lot of e-mail questions about ducks as pets, and at the moment I have no time to answer, at least not with the speed that ducklings deserve. For this reason I have put toghether a "Frequently Asked Questions" page. Please have a look at that, before e-mailing me!