Ducklings

We put a clutch of duck eggs in the incubator and so far five have hatched. They are white pekin ducks and we have a flock of seven females and one male duck, or drake, which we keep for eggs. They are very good layers and keep us, and others, supplied throughout the whole year. 

Having a drake in the flock ensures that the eggs will be fertilised and therefore will potentially hatch if the conditions are right. The usual way of distinguishing the drake from the ducks is that they have curlier tail feathers and they don't make the traditional "quack, quack" call you expect from a duck. It's more of a rasping, wheezy sound. A much easier way of identifying the drake is that he is spotlessly white, whereas the ducks have muddy footprints on their backs. All of them.

We normally buy in a batch of day old ducklings each year and grow these on separately for meat, but we thought we would try to hatch our own. The ducklings in the photo below all hatched within the previous 24 hours. They are much larger than chicken chicks. We know from experience that they will eat voraciously and will grow very rapidly to adult size by 8-10 weeks time.