This is a very safe prediction. But isn't it cruel that just when we are getting adjusted to the idea that our new babies are actually laying eggs! That we can eat! And giving us eggs every day! Then it is fall and the days are short and they are slowing down or stopping altogether and then we have to worry that we will be that one chicken freak with the flock of hens that simply don't lay.
But about your prediction: besides the few chicks we hatched a few weeks ago, we just hatched a little clutch of duck eggs the past few days!
I gave our ducks a nesting box as a shelter, and when Dear Rodger began using it to lay her eggs (instead of depositing them in the pool or wherever) Nelson got all hopeful and refused to collect them for eating. And though Dear Rodger would spend some time in the box, she didn't stay there all day. But Nelson STILL refused to collect the eggs. There was quite a pile! SO ... When our second Barred Plymouth Rock went broody, Nelson snagged a bunch of the duck eggs and put them under the broody chicken. He left her in the nesting box in the main coop so that she could get to food, water, exercise, and there would be any umber of friends on hand to cover her clutch when she was stretching her legs. It is so cute how another hen will volunteer to babysit the eggs -- but it freaked Nelson out at first and he kept shooing them away.
When there were signs of hatching we moved Ms. Broody's whole nesting tray out of the nesting box and put it inside a specially built "brooder" cage in the heated "youth coop" so she could have some security and privacy. This is where she and her hatchlings will stay until the ducklings are feathered, etc.
I think Nelson started with about 12 duck eggs under Ms. Broody, which was a lot for a chicken to cover, some either cracked or were duds early on, he kept candling and culled at least one rotten one, one hatched super early and didn't make it, and by hatching day he was down to 8 with "potential". I think 6 of those hatched, and one struggled to get upright and didn't make it through the first night. Today I believe he has 5 ducklings. Not sure what's up with those last two eggs ... But considering the number of eggs he left uncollected in the duck's nesting box, and the varying ages of those eggs, I'm just glad some of them hatched.
He candled a well-developed egg for me and honestly I was disturbed by the shadow of the moving blob inside. I really felt like I was intruding and shouldn't be disturbing the eggs while ducklings were working so hard to build themselves.
I should get Nelson to post some photos. It is cuteness overload. Send good vibes this way to help the little guys thrive ... it isn't exactly the right time of year for ducklings.
I think at the top of our egg production we were getting about 4 dozen eggs per day. Yesterday it was 2 dozen, but they are bigger than they used to be. I'm hoping both size and number improves when my fodder project is in full swing. I'm also going to start fermenting their feed.
