Call me crazy, but we added six more ducklings to the flock this year.

We rolled the dice with our additions last summer and ended up with three males and two females.

At first, it wasn’t an issue, but as they hit their first full-fledged mating season, the dynamic got a little, let’s say, aggressive.

The options were to downsize the males or upsize the females. Obviously, there was no decision to make.

This time, we ordered only females. It still blows my mind that you can ship a box of ducklings across the country, and they’re in excellent shape.

Many kudos to all the postal workers who make that happen, and I am glad we could bring a small moment of joy to the clerks who were working the window that morning and “just had to peek.”

No one is more frustrated than a teenage boy who has to wait the entire school day and a track practice to get home to examine his new additions.

He’d had to reinvent his brood strategy, as the laundry room was already occupied with another fowl. His new setup in the basement is ideal for the ducklings, who can make a mess like no one’s business in no time flat.

I had to laugh when I noticed he’d already positioned a lawn chair right next to their new home.

I’ve been taking care of livestock my entire life, and there is something magical about seeing that love for animals, or any living thing, really, passed on to your kids.

Although we have always had a pet, it has only been the last few years that the kids have been able to actually raise an animal from the beginning.

There has been heartache. Our first batch of guinea fowl did not fare very well, and some of our own incubated hatches have had less than desirable outcomes.

There has also been the loss of our cats, our guinea pigs and some of our other birds along the way. They are hard lessons to learn, especially when the kids think or know they’ve made a mistake, but it is all part of the process.

There is so much joy to balance it out. E recently discovered that the ducks seem to dance to certain songs, and she delights in teaching them show tunes and introducing them to the characters from “Glee.”

While she leaves most of the heavy lifting to G, she has been a very willing participant in what we call “duck-cuddles,” the few minutes each evening that we try to spend a little quality time with each bird, hand feeding them snacks and introducing them to a small pool of water.

It’s not just the ducks that we’re trying to help thrive. G, with a little help from A on spring break, cleared some small saplings that had popped up in and around part of his garden. I expected him to just chop them up into smaller pieces, to line his raised beds, but I was way off the mark.

We have been kicking around the idea of how to start a small greenhouse, and in the slim timbers, G saw the ideal framework for it.

Again, with A’s help, the two of them built a frame, and within a few days, he had a passable greenhouse. G set to work planting hundreds of flower and vegetable seeds.

When he wasn’t playing with the ducks, he was setting up an elaborate heat and humidifying system, including temperature monitors.

A few days later, I got home a little later than the kids, and was greeted by G dancing around the yard, telling me to “come see, come see.” Sure enough, things were sprouting! All of this happened during one of our last cold snaps, so the greenhouse really worked!

I feel that learning how to care for living things, whether they are cute and fuzzy, or slim and green, or everything in between, is one of the most valuable things that we’ve taught our kids.

I see it every night when E tucks her cat, Oscar, next to her. He knows the routine and has his own special spot-on the bed. Neither of them can settle without the other.

The kids are learning that the world is about more than just them, and that they can help make things grow and thrive.

It can be as simple as teaching the dogs a new trick, or as complicated as creating a garden that is an entire ecosystem.

Sometimes it’s messy, sometimes it’s smelly, sometimes I really wish some of this stuff stayed outside.

But it’s also wonderful to know that they can grow something that they can eat, and they can raise an animal that is willing to eat all the pests in the garden and that also dances to show tunes.

It feels like chaos most of the time, but it’s beautiful chaos.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News