Da' Cute and Cuddly Call Duck thread!

[sandracollins]

Is she sitting on eggs , my drake does that if his girl is sitting even if she is only laying

 

[Sweetfolly]

Quote:
Is that one in the very front of the picture crested? They're too cute!

I have one more Call egg hatching right now - we had a little incubator temperature mishap that I thought killed an entire batch of 6 eggs, but I threw 2 "questionable" ones into the hatcher just in case. Checked on them tonight and one of them is internally pipped and wiggling around like crazy!

The other is definitely dead.

After this little one, I have no more Calls hatching until the first week of May. I need a break!

 

[missy5]

sandracollins, if you are talking to me, no she's not sitting. Iv'e been waiting and waiting for her to start laying again. I don't know much about ducks. I do know my chickens lay almost everyday. Don't know if ducks do, maybe you can answer that one for me. She hasn't layed since Feb. and only layed maybe six eggs and then nothing. Are they like chickens? If you take away thier eggs everyday and don't let them sit then they will keep laying? Or do they only lay in spring and fall? I think she's trying to lay an egg but might be having trouble.

 

[klugshorses]

Any good ides on nesting for the call ducks? I have a 2 year old and a1 year old, and want to get them to hatch something this year!

I get about 1 call duck egg every other day, and they are always just scattered

 

[Sweetfolly]

Okay - yes, I will insist on reviving this thread every time I have have baby pictures to post.

After a few failed hatches (temperature drop, and then spike mishap

), I finally hatched two more Bibbed Call ducklings overnight - one Blue, and my very first Black!

And I have several more in the incubator due throughout the month!

 

[missy5]

It's my first time incubating calls. Well first time incubating any egg. Having a hard time with humidity going too high. One finaly hatched completly this morning. After five hours i had to take him out to dry him cause she was laying on a wet cloth and didn't seem to be drying at all. She is very wobbly. When do i try to feed and water her? She's under a heat lamp all by herself. With a stuffed friend of corse. lol I'm not sure the other egg out of the four is going to hatch. The other two were removed last week. I have more that i hope work for this coming weekend and the next, but i have to do some candling to be sure thier ok after the humidity problems.
Here's a pic of my lonely one.

You can see even the egg cartons are wet.

 

[gryeyes]

I hatched 3 call ducklings a few weeks ago, and I don't know what kind they are. Yes, I know I need pictures for the best assistance, but I don't have any right now...

Anyway, they are all black except with white bibs, but the bibs have black spots/speckles around the edges (they are not sharply defined) and there is white in the feathers next to their bills. One of them has mottled yellow and black webbing on its feet, while the other two have totally black legs/feet.

Are they even call ducks at all? They ARE small...

 

[Sweetfolly]

Quote:
I give them their first drink of water as soon as I put them in the brooder. Then, I sprinkle a little bit of food in the water for them to dabble at before I introduce dry food. When I do introduce the dry food, I sprinkle a bit of on in the floor, around the bowl. They'll start nibbling on the food on the floor out of curiosity, and then they're realize it's yummy and go looking for more of it in the bowl.

And yikes! That incubator DOES look wet (and the duckling sure is cute!

)! I'm going to tell you what I do with all my duck eggs, which won't necessarily work for you or anyone else, but it works for me so I always try to throw it out there as an option: I run my incubators DRY. That's right - no water until hatch time, unless the air cells look too big beforehand (which has only happened once, last summer during a drought). At hatch time, I crank the humidity up to about 70-80% - enough so that there's condensation on the incubator walls. However, even at THAT level, the egg cartons that I set the eggs in to hatch never look that wet. They might feel slightly damp to the touch, but they look dry. Does your incubator have some vents that you can open up to let some humidity out?

gryeyes - Sounds like Black Bibbed. The bib isn't necessarily clearly defined - for a show quality bird, you would want a nice, crisp, teardrop-shaped bib with clean edges, but the pet-quality ones are rarely marked as perfectly. With Bibbed Calls, you'll often see the white bib "leaking" up onto the face, around the bill and the eyes. They could possibly be part of a Black Magpie project as well.

 

[missy5]

I raised the new egg cartons on a couple of racks i use for cooling cakes and pies. It seems to be much better. Thanks.

 

[gryeyes]

Quote:
Thank you, Sweetfolly! They're Black Bibbed. After you posted that information, I went on a search to see other Black Bibbed call ducks from breeders. Mine are definitely "pet quality" calls, but that doesn't matter to me because I have no intention of showing any of my birds.

Thanks again! It's nice to be able to put a name to what they are, now! (Other than cutie patooties.)