Helping ducklings to experience life...

A duck is setting on a nest which she made on the float
at the end of a finger on a dock where I have a boat. When
I noticed her there I knew I'd be taking the boat in and out,
and it would scare her off the nest. So I got some black
plastic and made a blind to close off my inside of the finger
so she couldn't see out and get scared, and dropped it
in place one of the first nights she started to set. It scared
her off then, but she came right back and the blind has
kept her from getting off several times since then.
Why? The baby ducks won't last a month. Some will die
in the first day or two. The mother ducks are followed by
groups of large carp who can eat day or two old ducks,
and apparently attacked by other things since I only saw
two of the many last year live long enough to grow much
feather. It might have been better just to break up the
nest and prevent all that, as "ARAs" want to do to all
domestic animals. But the experience of life must be
worth something, and hopefully it's worth a little effort
on my part to help a few zygotes get to be baby ducks
for a little while.

<dh@.> wrote
> A duck is setting on a nest which she made on the float
> at the end of a finger on a dock where I have a boat. When
> I noticed her there I knew I'd be taking the boat in and out,
> and it would scare her off the nest. So I got some black
> plastic and made a blind to close off my inside of the finger
> so she couldn't see out and get scared, and dropped it
> in place one of the first nights she started to set. It scared
> her off then, but she came right back and the blind has
> kept her from getting off several times since then.
> Why? The baby ducks won't last a month. Some will die
> in the first day or two. The mother ducks are followed by
> groups of large carp who can eat day or two old ducks,
> and apparently attacked by other things since I only saw
> two of the many last year live long enough to grow much
> feather. It might have been better just to break up the
> nest and prevent all that, as "ARAs" want to do to all
> domestic animals. But the experience of life must be
> worth something, and hopefully it's worth a little effort
> on my part to help a few zygotes get to be baby ducks
> for a little while.

The ducklings were already alive before you intervened. All
you did way modify your own behaviour to prevent you
from influencing them in a negative way. The parallel is to
animal welfare, not to animals getting to be born.

No moral imperative exists to raise livestock so they can
experience life.