Family Does Everything They Can to Help Desperate Mother Duck Lay Eggs After Noticing Her Sitting on Empty Nest for Weeks (Exclusive)
Monica and Dimy Abramov.Credit: Maggie Abramov
Monica and Dima Abramov are raising a large brood of ducks on their South Florida property
The couple’s duck rescue videos have drawn a large following on their @ChaosWithMaggie social media page
Speaking with PEOPLE, Monica explains how the account and raising the ducks have changed the family’s life
Monica Abramov and her husband, Dima, noticed a mother duck on their property who seemed to be struggling.
They watched as the mama duck, whom the family named Moira, laid a nest of eggs, successfully raising only one duckling. However, soon after the duckling hatched, the family stopped seeing it around.
Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE, Monica shares that despite losing her nest and the one duckling that hatched, the duck was still broody, sitting on the empty nest waiting for another to hatch.
The family made it their mission to help the duck, who so clearly wanted to raise ducklings of her own.
Buddy and his mom.Credit: Maggie Abramov
“The first thing we tried to do was we got her little ducklings from Tractor Supply, and it didn’t work,” she says. “She rejected them right away.”
After Moira rejected the purchased ducks, the family learned that the group of four that they had acquired were actually domestic ducks and could not be released into the wild around their property.
“We’re like, ‘Okay, great.’ So now they’re our ducks. So we’ve taken them on.” Online, Monica has started social media pages under the username @ChaosWithMaggie, which she started when the family got their dog, Maggie. The four white Pekin ducks that feature heavily on her page now are the same ducks the couple purchased to help Moira.
The next thing the couple tried was introducing Moira to other ducklings they rescued from the pond on their property. Unfortunately, she says, they didn’t make it, and Moira was once again without a brood of her own.
One of the family’s ducks.Credit: Maggie Abramov
“So this poor mom was just still sitting on this nest and waiting to be a mom,” continues Monica. “Finally, we got her fertile eggs from a hatchery online, and she ended up, after 34 days, finally hatching one baby.”
The family named the duckling Miri — short for Miracle, they say. Now, Moira is finally off of her nest. It’s been nearly a month and a half since Miri hatched, and “they’re doing amazing.”
These days, the Abramovs’ property is continuing to look more and more like a petting zoo. In fact, Moira and Miri’s story is not even the first animal story that has gone viral on her page.
Dima went viral for his friendship with another duck, Buddy. “Things kind of exploded from there, and we were like, ‘Wow, people really love the wildlife and the ducks in particular,’ ” adds Monica.
The video that really took off was a video of another mama duck that had laid her eggs on the family’s property — and she’d only successfully hatched one egg as well.
The four Pekin ducks.Credit: Maggie Abramov
“We started helping them because they were in a really sunny spot,” she says, adding that South Florida, where she is based, is quite hot, so feeding the ducks water was a must.
“The male ducks/drakes are a little bit aggressive towards lady ducks, so we were just protecting them from the drakes and giving them food and water,” she continues. “And then my husband set up an umbrella for them and then a little kiddie pool, and it just sort of catapulted from there and we documented everything.”
One of the ducklings, a Muscovy duck, started gravitating toward Dima.
“He would look for him. Mostly the Muscovy ducks are very skittish,” says Monica. “They won’t let you just pick them up, right? It was just such an anomaly, and we didn’t know anything about ducks at the time, so we just thought it was so incredible.”
By no means would the couple consider themselves experts on the myriad of ducks and animals that have made their home around their property. They’ve learned much from their followers by documenting their journey on social media.
“It has been insane. Learning through, honestly, a lot of homesteaders, a lot of people who own ducks, obviously through social media, which you have to take with a grain of salt because you don’t know who’s the expert and who’s not,” she adds. “We’ve learned all these terms that we never... like I didn’t know that their beaks were actually called bills, and we didn’t know that they laid eggs even if they didn’t have a drake to fertilize them, that they just lay eggs. So things like that, we’re just learning as we go.”
As babies, the ducks would stay inside with the family, especially when they had other considerations like Minnie, one of the other fowl on the family’s page who had to be rehabilitated to walk again.
“The big ducks, we definitely don’t let inside. Honestly, they have no ... poop reflex, I guess. They’ll just poop everywhere,” she laughs. They also play it safe when it comes to Maggie, their pup, not letting her interact with the ducks.
Dima and Buddy as a baby.Credit: Monica Abramov
“They love to hang out in our garage, so that’s their safe place, especially because it’s been super rainy in South Florida,” she says. “So they love the rain, but when it gets too crazy, they’ll come into the garage. Every morning when I go to work, I say hello to all the ducks because they’re always at the front.”
The brood is ever-expanding. “It ended up that [Miri and Moira] are like — I don’t want to say the bosses, but they’re so tough. We have these Egyptian geese that are also on our property, and they bully all of the ducks. They run away, they’re so terrified of [the geese], but Miri and Moira will bully them right back, send them right into the pond.”
However, the family’s time with their crew of animals may soon be coming to an end.
“We are moving to an acreage property next month where we’re going to be building a little hobby farm and getting more ducks and whatnot,” she explains. While the four Pekin ducks will join the family in their move, the wild ducks — like Buddy, Minnie, Miri and Moira — are a different story.
“We’re not going to take the wild ducks because this is their habitat, and we thought about it,” she says. “They have their whole flock here and a whole community. We can’t bring them all.” They’re still on the fence about bringing Buddy, and Dima is “very sad” about the prospect of leaving him behind, says Monica.
The four Pekin ducks.Credit: Maggie Abramov
“We’ve been having a lot of cuddly moments with him, and he loves that duck,” Monica says. “He’s just absolutely obsessed with him. So again, we might still bring him. We just want to consult with some experts and see if that’s the right thing to do. Obviously, selfishly, we want to bring them, but we just don’t know if it’s the right move.”
One of Monica’s favorite parts of the experience has been watching her three boys interact with the ducks, especially her 5-year-old son Noah. “He’s been able to hold Minnie when she was little and when she was injured, and same with Buddy. So he just loves animals.”
Monica never could have anticipated how much the animals would change their family’s life. “Something about ducks has completely changed our life, and this account changed our life. The way that we see and look at animals is just completely changed.”
“We’ve always liked the rural lifestyle, and when we lived in Canada, we actually lived by the lake, but we never really owned animals outside of dogs,” she continues. She now volunteers at the Humane Society three times a week, buoyed by her love for animals, which has only grown because of the ducks on her property.
Beyond that, Monica adds: “We didn’t realize how many people would really connect with our stories and the ducks, and it’s really made us realize how much we love storytelling too.” They’ve enjoyed growing the account and learning how to use social media as a tool for their stories.
“But yeah, it’s just been a complete 180 in our lives, and now we’re moving to a future farm, so it’s crazy.”
Source: Nature
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