Raising our Ducks and Chickens

by Nitya Poudel

On March 20, 2016, we went to buy the ducks and chickens. It has already been a year that we bought them for the first time. We went to lagankhel to get the ducks and chickens. It was  beside the Police station. They all were so cute when we bought them, especially the yellow one. We were planning to get the chickens only but when we went there we could not not buy the ducks and come back only with the chickens. From the beginning of the time we bought we have been taking good care of them.

When they were small we used to put them inside the bath tubs. To make them warm we even put a small bulb. We fed them with dana and dhuto everyday. As they started growing and we moved them from the bath tub to a cage. When they started growing we started buying more ducks. I and Kusma used to take care of the ducks when they were small but now everybody takes care of them. We also created a small pool for them to play in. The gate was not so powerful so the ducks kept getting released and ate a lot of vegetables like the bunnies. When we took them to the bath tub the cock would stand on one duck and hit it with his beak. Kusma said that it would help the ducks lay eggs but I didn’t understand how. Bhagwati mam told that if a cock hits the duck like that it can die. From then whenever we saw the cock hitting the duck we drove him away. Once when it was raining hard water was collected in the cemented place so we made the ducks swim in the water. We also made them swim in the bath tub of the fish.

After some months, the duck started laying eggs. When we tasted the eggs it was very tasty. I liked it a lot. We had big ducks as well as baby ducks. One day when we were taking the ducks and chickens inside the store for the night we found one duck missing. We searched for the duck whole night. In the morning we found it near a flower pot. It was dead. It was killed by a cat. From then onwards we were told not to take the ducks towards that place.

We have also dissected some of our ducks. Before we dissected the ducks we were told to take a video in which everybody had to tell how they had taken care of this duck. I felt very sad when we dissected the ducks. But during the dissection we got a lot of information on ducks. We found out that male ducks were called drake.

Some days ago we were going to dissect all the ducks because they were not laying eggs. I was very sad when I got this news. But the very next day they started laying eggs and so now we are not going to dissect the ducks. Now we are taking good care of them because we have only four ducks left. Now we will feed them nicely so they could more eggs. By taking care of the ducks, fishes, chickens and bunnies we now have a life time experience that we could never forget.