First duckling hatch of 2025!

[My15Ducks]

I am finally ready to incubate my first ducklings of the year! The father is my buff colored, mixed laying breed, drake, Banana. The mother is my purebred Khaki Campbell duck, Cardamom “Cardi”. If I’m understanding color genetics correctly, the ducklings will be sex linked. The girls should be buff like dad. I did step 1 today, putting Cardi and Banana in their own pasture together. Next step is seeing if she is laying right now . So it’s still a long time until I have ducklings. I will post photos of the ducklings and incubation updates here for fun.

This is Banana.

 

[My15Ducks]

Banana & Cardi

 

[My15Ducks]

Sadly Cardi is not laying so I will have to wait longer for this cross. But I put my Khaki Campbell cross drake, Div with some girls so hopefully I’ll get some hatching eggs from them. He is chocolate and white so he can also have sex link ducklings

 

[Daphne_loves_mealworms]

Sadly Cardi is not laying so I will have to wait longer for this cross. But I put my Khaki Campbell cross drake, Div with some girls so hopefully I’ll get some hatching eggs from them. He is chocolate and white so he can also have sex link ducklings

How many hatches are you hoping for this year?

 

[My15Ducks]

I’m not sure - it depends on how many girls I get per batch. I’m probably going to be doing a bunch of small hatches, until I get 10-15 girls. There are several pairings that I want to do with my various drakes. Very exciting

How many hatches are you hoping for this year?

 

[My15Ducks]

Here is Div & his 2 ladies. I think a lot of my ducks are chocolate colored so I only chose these 2 since I’m trying to produce sex linked ducklings. Div is a Khaki Campbell mix - I have no idea what breed he is mixed with. The grey/blue duck is Lovely and the Black duck doesn’t have a name - yet. They are both mixes, probably including some Cayuga & Swedish blue

 

[My15Ducks]

Div is showing no interest in the girls when I’m around. He’s 11 months now old so I don’t think he has any excuse except maybe the time of year

 

[My15Ducks]

Today I started collecting eggs for hatching. Div has been with the girls for 10 days and I never see him show interest in them so I am not optimistic. I will put 12-14 eggs in the incubator and hopefully some will be fertile and if not I will try again

 

[My15Ducks]

I have my incubator running in “testing mode”. Temperature is good but humidity is a tad low. I haven’t had problems with humidity being low before so I’m fiddling with it a bit tonight. If I can get everything stable I’ll put the eggs in tomorrow

 

[My15Ducks]

Here we go! 15 eggs! 10 from Div & his ladies, and 5 from the new Runner ducks that I bought. They were living way chocolate dusky drake before I bought them so hopefully their eggs are fertile. .