Project 52: Summer Fun

This week is all about Summer Fun. To me, this brings up visions of BBQs, water balloon fights, and swimming at the river. With this serious heat wave hitting Sacramento right now, swimming in the river sure sounded good. However, with everyone home right now (and me still working), the river and lake have been crazy busy on the weekends. So instead, we opted for a little water fun in our backyard.

In case you haven't been following my stories on Instagram, my husband and I got a pair of rouen ducks a few weeks ago. We actually have a bunch of ducks coming from a hatchery next month that we will be growing out for meat, but we couldn't resist popping by Lee's Feed when we heard they had ducklings in. When we got there, they had a whole slew of buff ducks, and two lonely female rouen ducklings left. Thinking we would go ahead and start our meat duck test out with just a couple, we bought the two rouen ducklings (since that was one of the breeds that had been recommended to us for raising meat ducks).

However, upon taking out two little ducklings home (fondly named Cheese & Quackers by me), my husband and I began discussing the possibility of keeping a couple ducks year-round for eggs. So naturally I said yes and suggested we keep these two as we had already become fond of them. Over the past weeks, we have become increasingly attached to them and their cute little wiggly butts. I mean, come on, who wouldn't love those cute little faces?

So, with it being so warm this week, we're testing putting the ducks outside. Normally I would wait a couple more weeks, but it's only dropping into the 70s at night (did we get transported to Arizona?), which is plenty warm for them. With them being outside, we also decided it was time to start acclimating them to their swimming pool. Although they really only need enough water to drink and dip their bills, ducks love having enough water to swim and play, so of course I bought them a swimming pool. We bought one of those collapsible kiddie pools off Amazon so that we could easily store it away if we needed to.

While we mostly stayed out of the water, Cheese and Quackers had an absolute blast playing in their new pool! Ducklings lack the oil in their feathers that make adult ducks so buoyant, and I'm an overprotective duck mama, so I won't be leaving them unsupervised with the kiddie pool anytime soon. However, I definitely plan to work some duckling pool time into my schedule as often as I can!

Want to capture your pet enjoying the last month of summer? Start the booking process today!

Don't forget to continue following the blog circle to see what summer fun everyone else got up to this week. Up next is Angela of Noses & Toes Pet Photography in Spokane, WA, launching a different kind of dog portrait.