What a day! Yesterday, I let the 4 new hen ducks out to graze with the 3 male drakes who have been on the farm for about 6 months now. The boys are so well trained and acclimated that they just let themselves out in the morning and put themselves back in the pen at night and never leave the area around the hay barn where they live. Well, not so for the hens! I let them out in the morning and thought that they'd stick with the drakes. Wrong! They went on a trek that took them to the nearest neighbors and that's a quarter of a mile away. I couldn't find them, walked a couple miles along the creek looking for them only to come home and finally see them across the creek, pasture and into the marsh area by the neighbors. I grabbed Tag, my Border Collie that's a good duck herder. These ducks can't fly and Tag can herd them home right? Wrong! They get into the reeds and they go into hiding. They won't come out and they hunker down. So...I went in after them. I caught 2 and carried them to the cage I had in the car. The other 2 had disappeared and I couldn't find them anywhere. So back home again to wait for them to come out. They did, and the neighbor came out and captured them for me and brought them home. Long story short, I spent 4 hours yesterday hunting ducks (but not for dinner). Today and the next few days they will stay in the pen and get more acclimated to their new home. Then I'll teach them (using Tag) that they can go in and out of the machine shed on their own and that they must not go on any outings that means squeezing through the sheep's fencing. Then things will be just ducky for all of us. <G>