Uninhibited Ducks - Duck and Duckling Rescue and Sanctuary

Well it's almost time.... In just over a week, Frisco will begin his journey up to Wellington.

Over the last week or so there have been ups and downs. Some dark areas of dead tissue developed on Friscos remaining leg and foot just over a week ago, a discovery which worried me greatly. Since then I have been dressing the leg with a combination of compression bandaging around the leg, and antibacterial dressings on the leg and foot. I also have been putting hyaluronic acid gel on the foot, as hyaluronic acid encourages tissue growth and repair. Luckily so far, since discovering the dead tissue, no further tissue death seems to have occurred. And the dead tissue that is there appears to be restricted to the outer layers of skin, ie cosmetic only. I am not sure what has caused it. Whether it is some event that has occurred and caused the death of a little bit of tissue at the time, and that is it. Or whether whatever injury caused Frisco to lose the ability to bear weight on his re mainly leg, also impacted on the blood supply to that leg, and as a result, caused tissue loss.

On the good side, Frisco has started to put a little bit of weight on his remaining leg. He cannot hop around on it except with assistance, and cannot stand for any amount of time on the leg, but he can hold his wait briefly, and has been able to move himself around a little.

To give you an example. Until a week ago, Frisco had been unable to move himself from one place to another AT ALL...I could put him down, and if someone came along and drew one of those police chalk outlines around him, he would still have been perfectly inside that outline even hours later.

Now if I put him down in one spot, I may find him a foot or two away from it when I return.

While he started putting some weight on his leg just over a week ago, it is only in the last couple of days that he has been moving about a little.

In the last couple of days he has been moving from where I put him, when I put him outside. And he is also more active about moving away from me when I go to pick him up (this is a natural tendency for a duck, even when handled a lot, the only ducks I have seen that won't walk away from an approaching human, even one they know well, are either human imprinted (hatched by a human) or have seen green garden peas in that humans hand! - My ducks forget completely that they are scared of humans when I bring out the (thawed) frozen garden peas!)

Also, Frisco has developed his adult Drake Voice!

While only females develop the loud quack that is usually associated with a duck, young drakes go through 3 different voices. After starting like with the chirpy cheep of a duckling, a drake will normally keep his duckling voice for a little while after his sisters get their 'quacks'. He will then get a sort of intermediate voice which sounds like a horse whispered whistle. I call it their 'worried' voice, as to me young drakes always sound terribly worried when they call out with that voice.

After a month or two with their 'worried' voice, a drake will finally get his "verrp", his adult male voice. Described as a hoarse whisper, the only written description I have seen of the drake voice that resembles the sound, is the "verrp". So that is now what I call it.

Anyway, one day frisco was sounding "worried" two days later he was verrping with the best of them, and he now has a 100% manly verrp.

He's also become a little more cautious of me since getting his verrp, and as most adult ducks become more cautious of humans, even my human imprinted ones, I am guessing that this natural tendancy to avoid any predator (creature with two eyes on the front of its head) is behind Friscos slight change in behaviour towards me.

Soon he will probably molt into his mating plumage. And quite possibly this will happen while he is in Wellnngton, meaning my little wee duck will come back a grown up man-duck in totally different colors than he left! I'll have to look closely at his eyes to recognise him.