I was doing chores the other day when mom says “Hey! All your ducks are in a row.”

Sure enough. Here were all of my young ducks sitting along the side of the pen, in a neat little row, with their heads facing the same direction. Of course they didn’t stay there long enough for me to get a photo. When I came back with my camera they were all quacking around like nothing had happened.

I, of course, was thinking “Wow. All my literal ducks were in a row! How cool is that! Maybe I can get all my figurative ducks in a row?” After much thought and some motivation it seems to be working, but I couldn’t help but still wonder about the old adage ‘You need to get all your ducks in a row’. So I looked it up.

Thanks to the website phrases.org.uk I managed to find a few explanations for the phrase. Most were about how ducks will naturally be in a row; especially the babies. So if all of the momma ducks babies aren’t in a row behind her all is not right with the world, or the duckling that is straying has a good chance of being eaten. Seems pretty logical to me.

Another explanation of the phrase comes from ‘duck pins’ used in the lawn bowling games popular in the 1700s.

The phrase also seems to be very popular in the business world and though the majority of the people that are probably using that phrase have never lived on a farm or spent much time around ducks, they still know what it means.

Since I’m on the topic of farming and ducks, my baby ducks are now close to two months old. They have almost all of their pin feathers in and just need to grow a little more to catch up with my adult ducks. I’m always surprised at how fast ducks grow.

I am needing to get off the computer and do chores so I can go to work. We’re having our normal Indian Summer at the moment, and it’s best to take advantage of all the nice weather before the snow starts flying.

I’ll make sure to remember to keep all my ducks in a row.:)