Nothing like hearing quacking under your window to get you moving. Especially when your window opens out to the dog pen!
No, there should not be a duck in the dog oen. At least not if it wants to stay intact. Lucky for the duck, the dogs had not been let out yet.
A few minutes of outsmarting a duck and success! Here’s a picture of the culprit…who has now been chicken wire fenced out of her secret fit through spot. Bad duck!
Testing complete!
Good news…it held temperature! So I carefully marked x and o and a number or letter on the eggs I’ve been saving and loaded them in.
Meet hopefully a future flock of mostly ducks!
27 blue runner eggs (left side), 2 Sermama chicken eggs in middle, and 15 duck eggs from a mixed flock of buff and roeuns.
Stay tuned, I will be candling them in a few days!
Just got done setting up a new incubator. It has been a long time since I hatched anything, although when I did I did hundreds between ducks and quail!
I’ll be putting blue runner duck eggs, one tiny serama chicken egg (that’s all they’ve given me so far) , and filling the rest of the space with buff/Rouen mixed eggs. 28 days of waiting ahead of me!
But for now, I watch the temperature attempt to stabilize itself….
I somehow missed this post back then the ducks were hatching! Better late than never 🙂
I had one duck in an egg that just took his sweeet little time hatching. Problem was, the moms were stomping his egg and he wasn’t ready (note the bright red membranes). So I brought him in to keep an eye on him, using the heat from the brooder heat on him.
First coming in after I cleaned off the broken shell pieces:
A better look at him (no, I didn’t peel anything extra, this was the damage from the moms stomping him). I used some liquid coconut oil to moisten the edges of the shell where the membrances were to stop him from getting “shrinkwrapped” (membranes dry and trap the baby). Then I placed him in a small 1 quart cup with damp paper towels underneath and put him in the brooder directly under the light.
He stayed like this for 24 hours!
Caveat…always give them enough time to come out on their own. 24 hours seemed forever for this guy to just be sitting in the shell, but that’s how long it took before the veins in the shell membrane were gone! Had I tried to get him out too early, he would have probably died from blood loss. Make the conditions as good as you can and then wait…
Then…I looked over and he decided he’d had enough and gave a HUGE kick and tada!!! Freedom! I didn’t even have time to get a picture…
However, he wasn’t done yet since the umbilical cord area had not closed up (barely visible here).
I changed the paper towels and removed all the shell/membrane pieces and gave him some freshly dampened paper towels to lay on. I also placed a small amount of triple antibiotic ointment on the open naval area.
He stayed in the cup for another 12 hours until he was dry and the navel dried. The puppy pads were about to be changed in this picture…ducks are messy!
Once dry, a final inspection (including a sniff from Rudy, who never cared about baby birds oddly) and he was added to the group.
A few hours later…Can you tell which one he is? He ended up blending right in and had no issues!
This is a quick list style post of everything I took as a vendor to a local farmer’s market. Hopefully it helps someone not forget something! At this particular one I brought ducks, rabbits, bonsai, and pottery. In no particular order, here’s the packing list:
I think that’s it! And it all fit in the car 🙂
Pictures I took during August that I particularly liked :).
Duck in the pond (while it’s filling)
Pretty flowers! I’ll do a post on this one later
Young ducks attempting to evade capture, including a shelf I use as a chicken ladder that they knocked over.
View down the road as a storm is moving in
All images (c) Susan L. Marsh unless otherwise attributed, please receive written permission.
My newest designed duck house is a hit. Made with cattle panels, t posts, hardware cloth, a tarp, pipe insulation, and a door/frame built from wood. Low cost and predator resistant! The only issue I have is I didn’t take the old rabbit hutch I was given out before I built the door…and it’s too wide to go out. Oops. I’m leaving it in there in case any of the hens want to use it to lay eggs, I have had some success with that in the past. It’s also a visual barrier if I start having squabbles.
What to do when there are multiple hens sitting on a big nest?
Well, one thing is to candle the pile of eggs to reduce the number so the remaining ones have a chance at survival…I found that the hens kept rolling eggs around to have their own batch and some were ending up outside the nest.
I bought a rechargeable LED candler on Amazon for under $20 and decided to try it out. Below are two examples, one is a fertile growing egg and the other is a broken egg (not visible until candled).
This is a broken egg. It looks like it either rolled against something hard or got pecked by a beak. If the egg was almost done developing, I’d leave it as the break is only shell level and not into the membrane. But since it’s shell level and the nest is overwhelmed, it was added to the pig food bucket.
This is a fertile and growing egg. Notice the embryo in the middle with blood vessels radiating outward-all is going well!
All of the eggs that candled at this stage were marked and given back to the ducks. Advice: Remove the hen off the nest before trying this or you will probably get a bunch of pinch bites! I only candled after I was certain the hens were staying on the nest so they didn’t abandon it, about a week after I noticed they only came off for food and water.
Went to let the buff ducks group outing the morning and wait…why am I eye level with a duck?!?!
So it seems this little girl decided she doesn’t want to be down with every one else and has decided she would spend the night on top of the spare carrier and wind break making bags!
Well…can’t blame her, although I imagine it gets windy up there sometimes. Score one for the smart duck!
Extra picture from when I told her to get down…”down there?!?!” 🙂
They mentioned they heard ducks are better on grass than chickens (hence the comments about grass). Most of the thread was pro chicken, despite them asking specifically advice on raising ducks. Complaints about the ducks being messy with water, the poop being nastier than other animals, etc. My response (paragraphs added later):
Yes, ducks will leave grass standing whereas chickens scratch it up and destroy it. If ducks are in too small of an area, they will flatten it because they have flipper feet not because of behaviour.
They love water (ducks….of course!) and will make a mess. They’re poop is the same as any other bird, just more watery. I find I never step in duck poop after they’ve been in the yard, vs chickens that like to leave me piles and the dogs snacks. They actually can live without a pool (I have a bachelor pen that I use feed buckets for water and they’re fine) but they are a trip to watch. Yes, the pool will get dirty. The water is GREAT for watering gardens! I put a tree that likes a lot of water and nutrients on the other side of fence and dump my water there, it’s very happy. I use kiddie pools and siphon the water down until I can dump it. If you have sand around the pool, don’t wait too long between changes or it’ll have a lot in the bottom. What I’d love to have one day is a gravel bed with the pool up on pallets -gravel so they can’t dabble around the edges and then wash their dirty faces and repeat, up on pallets to stop them standing at the edge all day playing-in or out!
Mine are smart as the chickens if not smarter and they don’t attack humans/other animals/each other. Only nibbles I’ve had is when moving a broody hen or reaching under her to check eggs, just candled 40 eggs yesterday and simply picked the cranky one up and set her next to me. Try that with a 8 lb chicken with a sharp beak lol.
As far as heating the duck coop, you don’t need to worry about keeping them warm due to feathers, but make sure they have DRY bedding at night so it doesn’t freeze to them. I do not give them water or food in the night time pen , keeps it much cleaner.
Feedwise, My adults get the same layer pellets as the chickens, but the babies need supplimental niacin if you feed NON medicated crumbles. Don’t give them medicated ones! I use brewer’s years or niacin powder depending on what I have on hand until they are 3 months old…some only do it for 8 weeks. They get leg issues without it.
Breedwise, runners lay really well but mine are flighty and scatter. I like rouens and now buff , although 1/3 of my buffs are now broody so I get less eggs. Pekin ducks are loud and the messiest poop wise of any breed I’ve had. Muscovies are quiet but ugly and fly to your neighbors (related to geese). Khaki campell are good layers and friendly.
Pen wise, my nighttime pen is very secure (racoon tried its best to get in last night as a matter of fact but no go). I have a covered daytime pen since we have hawks and owls available too :).
The only reason I still have chickens is for their scratching capabilities as they are great for tilling the soil or turning over manure. They also make good garbage disposals, but now that I have pigs they’ve lost some of that.
Most of the problems with ducks is when people keep them in too small of an area and don’t make arrangements for water disposal. They are not good when caged animals unlike chickens and need room.
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