glenmar
Posted : 5/5/2010 7:53:38 PM
The story of Corky.....well, I happened to be in a Tractor Supply where I knew the manager and actually had gone to the stock room with him, looking for Blue. There was this little duck, in with the sick and dying chickens, just spinning around and around and around. Clearly some sort of nuerological issue. But, he didn't want to ring her neck, and I certainly didn't want to leave her there with the chickens, so home she came.
Fowl is hatched one day, put in boxes and MAILED the next and sit at the Post Office until someone comes from the receiving store to pick them up. At TS they put all the baby fowl in big livestock water bins under heat lamps and little kids delight in picking them up, and often either squeeze too hard or drop the poor little things. So Corky's issues may have been something she was born with, been caused by damage in shipping or from some little kid. No way to know.
Corky DOES have two legs, but one isn't right. It sticks out at an odd angle and doesn't really support her properly. Her left eye, the same side as the bad leg, isn't quite right either. Sometimes when she's out between rounds in the pool, grazing and picking bugs, she uses her left wing to balance herself a bit.
Because of all these issues, there is no way that Corky could ever live outside, so she lives in a giant dog crate in my diningroom! She gets an hour to an hour and a half outside in her pool with a little break for grazing, etc. She enjoys that, but totally LOVES her pool.
From my research I learned that ducks don't HAVE to have water for swimming. And all Cork has is her pool, but she makes the most of it.