BackyardBantams79
Chirping
- Mar 30, 2018
- 33
- 50
- 89
Fellow Oregonians and/or Idahonians (and even possibly Washingtonians). I have NINETEEN call duck babies!!!! 11 hatched by incubation and imprinted with people on 4/25-27th, and 8 more hatched by hen on 5/15 and just pulled today (so a bit on the squirrely side but more interesting colors and better beak size).
All are $20/ea. These are NOT show quality birds although the drake's lines have potential if they come through in any of the ducklings. Drake has fair confirmation but not a particularly 'full' round head although it's 'ok' and his beak is a pinch too long but still 'ok', hen has a little better body/neck proportion than the drake, but her head is on the slender side with a little longer beak and longer bridge between her eyes to her beak. The ducklings are all sexed and I'm fairly certain with their genders. Obviously the drakes are positives (there's no denying their anatomy) but occasionally males get mis-sexed as females if their 'parts' don't present when being checked. The 4 week old's are growing in real feathers and some even have their distinctive quacks (the boys are starting to hit puberty lol). Confirmation of genders can officially be identified by the curled tail feathers of drakes. As of now they wear different colored leg bands to identify them. Yellow/'tennis ball'-green for girls, and orange for boys.
Hen is an apricot silver (I have her brother and he is a dark apricot silver also known as a 'cinnamon'- they are hard to distinguish between a few other colors with the hens, but I have taken measures to obtain official call duck color charts to help identify them). Male is a white so the ducklings could (or should... not sure if it's a 'should' or 'could' as I'm not that informed on how the genetics work with this breed) be a dilution of the color. In addition to whatever hue of color they turn out to be, we also have multiple ducklings (both male and female) in the younger batch that are going to be blue bibbed or of the magpie marking variety. Two of our first batch (which we are potentially keeping) had the same markings as the hatchlings and they now have white patches on their neck and chest where the yellow was, and black bills. I will follow up this post with pics of the color chart identifying hen markings, and numbered individual pics of the ducklings so you can lay claim to specific ones. Please feel free to ask about personalities of the older batch as we have handled them extensively and they spent the first three weeks of their lives in our living room with people around ALL the time (someone was always home... and if not it was brief and our dog was the surrogate babysitter and they love her).
Uncle to these babies (the hen's brother- dark apricot silver drake) is also for sale. He will also be $15 as although he has his neat coloring, his head, neck, eye, beak... they're all wrong. He was older when we got him and never really came around to liking us. He's not a bad bird, just not personable like our others. He attacks his sister's mate at the first chance and tries to breed her so has been separated completely from the pair for everyone's sake. Pics will also be posted.
***NOTE: must have varmint-proof pen!!! The incubated ducklings are the culmination of a lot of work to get them to hatch at the numbers they did (if any of you know... call ducks can be tricky to incubate and get a good hatch rate and I was determined so spent many hours obsessing over these babies). We have poured a lot of love and time into these guys/gals and they deserve our follow-through that ensures they go to safe homes. We do not have the space for this many ducks- bantam or not lol. We will be keeping a couple out of them all but the rest need to find their forever homes. I'm holding the same requirements for the naturally hatched babies as well.
I am traveling from the Oregon coast (Coos Bay) straight across the state to Idaho and up towards McCall, ID. I can deliver anywhere along the way between June 16-17th. I will be making the return trip a couple weeks later and with enough interest could come home along the gorge leaving southern Washington as a potential delivery area as well and anywhere down the I-5 corridor to Roseburg.
Here's the rest of the story on how these guys came to be as this was NOT the plan lol...
We started initially eating the duck eggs and giving them to a friend who's allergic to chicken eggs. Then we became a bit overwhelmed with how many eggs we had between the call hen and our chickens and the kids weren't a fan of the duck eggs so I started collecting them hoping I could A) put them in a chicken's nesting box and get her to go broody, B) hatch the ducklings and stop producing eggs herself for a while, and C) maybe get a few ducklings out of the experiment. When we reached 10 eggs and none of the chickens would go broody and my efforts to convince the call hen failed, I ordered an incubator. At the point we got the incubator we had collected NINETEEN eggs!!!!! Then after a few incidences with them getting roughed up/broken by the chickens, we were down to 17 (some obviously too old). Put them back in with the duck to hopefully convince her to STOP laying and vwallah! she sat on them... for three days before abandoning ship. We brought them up and I candled them and ended up incubating 12 viable eggs! That means some were at least 12 days old, maybe 14 days old even, at time she started incubating them. Two were ahead of the game as had been booted out of the nest on day one and I put them right in the incubator which had been up and running just in case. Two days later she left her post and bedded down outside in the sun so the rest came in too.
12 eggs made it to the final week of incubation and we lost one to late death (probably one of the older eggs) and 11 hatched! All the while the hen had laid a nest of 10 more and sat on them- this time dedicated. So I let her do her thing while we wrangled the brood of ducklings inside. She hatched 8 of those!!! One was either late death or got pushed out of the nest before she finished incubation as it had vessels still, but was half the size of a fully developed embryo and lifeless. And that brings us to the current state of suburban farming with 3 chickens, 4 adult call ducks, and now 19 ducklings are growing like weeds!!!! We were definitely not set up for long term arrangements and facebook sales have proven as they always do... lots of 'tire-kickers' who never follow through on their interest. Even when I've offered to drive two hours one way to deliver.
So, with my upcoming trip across state with the potential to reach up to three states for delivery, I figured I'd reach out to you all!!!!
All are $20/ea. These are NOT show quality birds although the drake's lines have potential if they come through in any of the ducklings. Drake has fair confirmation but not a particularly 'full' round head although it's 'ok' and his beak is a pinch too long but still 'ok', hen has a little better body/neck proportion than the drake, but her head is on the slender side with a little longer beak and longer bridge between her eyes to her beak. The ducklings are all sexed and I'm fairly certain with their genders. Obviously the drakes are positives (there's no denying their anatomy) but occasionally males get mis-sexed as females if their 'parts' don't present when being checked. The 4 week old's are growing in real feathers and some even have their distinctive quacks (the boys are starting to hit puberty lol). Confirmation of genders can officially be identified by the curled tail feathers of drakes. As of now they wear different colored leg bands to identify them. Yellow/'tennis ball'-green for girls, and orange for boys.
Hen is an apricot silver (I have her brother and he is a dark apricot silver also known as a 'cinnamon'- they are hard to distinguish between a few other colors with the hens, but I have taken measures to obtain official call duck color charts to help identify them). Male is a white so the ducklings could (or should... not sure if it's a 'should' or 'could' as I'm not that informed on how the genetics work with this breed) be a dilution of the color. In addition to whatever hue of color they turn out to be, we also have multiple ducklings (both male and female) in the younger batch that are going to be blue bibbed or of the magpie marking variety. Two of our first batch (which we are potentially keeping) had the same markings as the hatchlings and they now have white patches on their neck and chest where the yellow was, and black bills. I will follow up this post with pics of the color chart identifying hen markings, and numbered individual pics of the ducklings so you can lay claim to specific ones. Please feel free to ask about personalities of the older batch as we have handled them extensively and they spent the first three weeks of their lives in our living room with people around ALL the time (someone was always home... and if not it was brief and our dog was the surrogate babysitter and they love her).
Uncle to these babies (the hen's brother- dark apricot silver drake) is also for sale. He will also be $15 as although he has his neat coloring, his head, neck, eye, beak... they're all wrong. He was older when we got him and never really came around to liking us. He's not a bad bird, just not personable like our others. He attacks his sister's mate at the first chance and tries to breed her so has been separated completely from the pair for everyone's sake. Pics will also be posted.
***NOTE: must have varmint-proof pen!!! The incubated ducklings are the culmination of a lot of work to get them to hatch at the numbers they did (if any of you know... call ducks can be tricky to incubate and get a good hatch rate and I was determined so spent many hours obsessing over these babies). We have poured a lot of love and time into these guys/gals and they deserve our follow-through that ensures they go to safe homes. We do not have the space for this many ducks- bantam or not lol. We will be keeping a couple out of them all but the rest need to find their forever homes. I'm holding the same requirements for the naturally hatched babies as well.
I am traveling from the Oregon coast (Coos Bay) straight across the state to Idaho and up towards McCall, ID. I can deliver anywhere along the way between June 16-17th. I will be making the return trip a couple weeks later and with enough interest could come home along the gorge leaving southern Washington as a potential delivery area as well and anywhere down the I-5 corridor to Roseburg.
Here's the rest of the story on how these guys came to be as this was NOT the plan lol...
We started initially eating the duck eggs and giving them to a friend who's allergic to chicken eggs. Then we became a bit overwhelmed with how many eggs we had between the call hen and our chickens and the kids weren't a fan of the duck eggs so I started collecting them hoping I could A) put them in a chicken's nesting box and get her to go broody, B) hatch the ducklings and stop producing eggs herself for a while, and C) maybe get a few ducklings out of the experiment. When we reached 10 eggs and none of the chickens would go broody and my efforts to convince the call hen failed, I ordered an incubator. At the point we got the incubator we had collected NINETEEN eggs!!!!! Then after a few incidences with them getting roughed up/broken by the chickens, we were down to 17 (some obviously too old). Put them back in with the duck to hopefully convince her to STOP laying and vwallah! she sat on them... for three days before abandoning ship. We brought them up and I candled them and ended up incubating 12 viable eggs! That means some were at least 12 days old, maybe 14 days old even, at time she started incubating them. Two were ahead of the game as had been booted out of the nest on day one and I put them right in the incubator which had been up and running just in case. Two days later she left her post and bedded down outside in the sun so the rest came in too.
12 eggs made it to the final week of incubation and we lost one to late death (probably one of the older eggs) and 11 hatched! All the while the hen had laid a nest of 10 more and sat on them- this time dedicated. So I let her do her thing while we wrangled the brood of ducklings inside. She hatched 8 of those!!! One was either late death or got pushed out of the nest before she finished incubation as it had vessels still, but was half the size of a fully developed embryo and lifeless. And that brings us to the current state of suburban farming with 3 chickens, 4 adult call ducks, and now 19 ducklings are growing like weeds!!!! We were definitely not set up for long term arrangements and facebook sales have proven as they always do... lots of 'tire-kickers' who never follow through on their interest. Even when I've offered to drive two hours one way to deliver.
So, with my upcoming trip across state with the potential to reach up to three states for delivery, I figured I'd reach out to you all!!!!
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