Just Ducky

Ducky

We have an incubator and have lots of fun hatching eggs in it. Chicken eggs only take 21 days to hatch, give or take a couple of days. Duck eggs take a bit longer from 28 days (muscovies take 35 days), give or take a couple of days. The temperature and humidity needs to be monitored in the incubator as well as turning the eggs so the little embryo doesnt stick to the inside of the egg. This spring I was doing some looking on Ebay and found some hatching eggs with several different kinds of chickens and the package also included ducks. We havent had ducks on our little farm before and thought that we might enjoy them. The chickens hatched out pretty well with what looks like now to be mixed breed chickens, but thats ok they still lay eggs that are eatable. We then were anxiously awating the pipping of the duck egg. Pipping is when the bird begins to break out of the shell...the baby bird has a little bump on the beak that helps them go around the inside of the shell and crack it open so they can emerge. The little bump is called an egg tooth and the chick generally breaks out of the larger end of the egg where the air sac is. The picture above is from our first duck appropriately named "Ducky". Ducky was just out of the shell when this picture was taken. You can see that the feathers are still wet. Ducky stayed in the incubator until her feathers were nice and dry and she was moving around well. I am saying her because Ducky is a girl. Female ducks are the noise makers....they quack where as male ducks make a hissing sound. Ducky sure is loud...she makes quite a ruckus when I go into the barn in the morning, greeting me with a series of loud quacks. We hatched out a second duck too. It is a Muscovy and took 35 days to hatch. This second duck is named Ducky Jr...arent we creative?

Can you see how their coloring is different? Ducky is dark brown while Ducky Jr is dark brown with pale yellow. They sure do grow quickly too and it seems much faster than the chickens. Ducky Jr did have a problem though and we were not sure if he was going to live. I found him laying outside on his back unable to get up, kind of like a turtle. So I scooped up Ducky Jr and we checked him out fairly well, not finding any visable signs of any injury we put him in his own little cage with food and water. It took a couple of weeks and it looks like Ducky Jr has healed fairly well from whatever problem he had. He moves around like a champ and no longer has to stop for breaks and doesnt fall over onto his back anymore. Its just a guess but we think that maybe he grew too fast for his little legs and didnt have the strength to hold himself up. We are guessing that Ducky Jr is a male. Muscovies are pretty quiet ducks, from what we have read and Ducky Jr doesnt really make any noise besides a little hissing sound. So maybe we have a male and female????? Now if they are a male and female and we hatched out fertilized eggs from them the resulting duck would be a mule. This mule duck would be infertile (unable to reproduce). The ducks have been nice to have around. They do like to play in water, eat grass and other greens plus a generous helping of bugs. We are awating eggs here soon. The chickens should be laying towards the end of October, ducks take 20-24 weeks to bein laying eggs. About the same amount of time for chickens to being laying