- May 12, 2020
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Congratulations on the surviving duckHello everyone! I'm so glad I found this page on Google and it has come in handy since my daughter got ducks 6 months ago. Of course, she didn't get regular ducks but instead got some boujie ones.
She started this journey because she has always wanted a bird but also to give her an outlet being teen life comes with struggles. It has been a wild ride from the get go due to predatorsand has often been the cause of many tears. However, it has also brought alot of joy to the whole family.
She saved her money and bought 4 ducks in July. She chose a female Indian runner (twinkie), a female magpie (winnie), a male black runner (curry), and a male white crested duck (mayo). Did we know the meaning behind the crest before getting him? No, we had no idea until months later due to an article I seen on here. Would we have chosen differently? I'm not sure, his personality was alot bigger than his crest and he was perfectly healthy.
Since then we added 2 cayugas, Ashanti and Jamal (still not quite sure we have the sex right being we got them from a feed store. It's sent me down a rabbit hole since they don't exactly fit the description of certain breeds. I believe we have 3 saxony and 3 buff ducks. I'm so confused because they say the saxony female has lines by the eyes and the males have different shade from head to neck with a white ring. However, if the male has the white neck ring, why does it also have the lines by the eyes but doesn't have different head color and why is his chest red?!?! I'll attach pictures so maybe you all can help me solve the longest mystery of my life.
Since we began this duck journey, we have lost Curry, Marty (insurance claim replacement duck), a possible saxony, winnie, and most recently Mayo our spunky crested duck. We've made so many adjustments, added lights, cellular cameras, and so on. It's hard because they aren't just ducks, they are our family but Mayo has absolutely devastated us.
Due to this, we got an incubator being we had several eggs and to try to get our minds off of the loss. We only put 4 eggs in to begin since we've never done this before and one of them was not fertile. A week later we added 5 more. Imagine my suprise when only 1 was not fertile but I was shocked when I realized one of the fertilized eggs was actually a double yolk. I knew this was the biggest egg I had ever seen but didn't realize it was a double yolk, I even candled them before putting them in. I then went down the rabbit hole on viability and it weighed heavily on me. It would have been pretty amazing if it had hatched and I believe there was plently of room since it was 3 times as big as their regular egg size. However, on day 10 or so they were no longer alive. We were then down to 6 eggs. I put the first remaining 3 in lockdown and we were so excited! At this point we knew the mom was our Indian runner and assumed our Mayo was the poppa. Finally we had one to pip but came out alot sooner than expected and it was the most beautiful duckling ever. I'm not sure how but it was silver as in platinum. Unfortunately, it passed a couple of hours later. Then the second one pipped and finally made his grand escape but was still attached to the shell and sadly passed away. Our 3rd egg finally hatched with no problems. It's name is William and hopefully it's a boy
. It's yellow and is definitely runner with his pretty tall stance and mile long neck lol. Then a week later our other set starts hatching. Imagine our suprise when the first one comes out yellow and black with a crest?!?! How?!?! It's name is doc from tombstone
After some rabbit hole researching, I found some interesting information. I thought our first set would definitely be our beloved mayo's babies because those were laid when he was here but the other ones were laid after he was gone. So apparently, a female duck can actually store the drakes "GIFT" anywhere 2-15 weeks!?!?! That's the only explanation I could find which would make sense but I'm so confused being they aren't just yellow like he was or yellow like the mom. Our other ducks weren't laying eggs when these were collected and our cayuga just started laying eggs (we have those in the incubator now).
Sorry for the longest introduction ever! I just got super excited to share our journey and have so MANY questions.
Pictures:
1st- Twinkie and Mayo
2nd- Ts ducks
3rd- Ashanti and Jamal
4th- silver duckling
5th- 2nd batch 2nd to hatch Aka snoop
6th- 1st batch 3rd to hatch Aka William
7th- 2nd batch 1st & 2nd to hatch Aka snoop and doc
Don't have a picture of the last one to hatch from the 2nd batch yet but it's name is bubbles. Also, out of all the eggs to hatch only 2 actually pipped in the air cell even though we followed all directions.
You have a lovely little collection there, they really are beautiful
I'm sure you'll find lots of directions here in BYC. we have so many different threads.
