Holderread's Drakes For My Hens

[duckmeister]

My call babies tonight, the little runt gets a little bigger, and they go in the outside pen with their siblings. The larger sized one sounds like it's going to be a hen, she's got a little gravel in her peep already. I love her, she's the only one i hatched in the bator from start to finish and i had to help her out of the shell, a 360 degree breakout! Love her plump little body and head, short little wide bill, little teardrop shaped body.

 

[Miss Lydia]

My call babies tonight, the little runt gets a little bigger, and they go in the outside pen with their siblings. The larger sized one sounds like it's going to be a hen, she's got a little gravel in her peep already. I love her, she's the only one i hatched in the bator from start to finish and i had to help her out of the shell, a 360 degree breakout! Love her plump little body and head, short little wide bill, little teardrop shaped body.

Aww they are both so pretty, I like your description of your little one. Her plump lil body, so cute.

 

[duckmeister]

 

[duckmeister]

my six white calls and 2 Metzer Farms wild type flying mallard ducklings. Bought the mallards at the feed store the same day my lone call ducking out of 12 incubator eggs hatched, thought he needed some company, and they hatched on the same day. The mallards are 2 to 3 days older than the youngest white calls, so you can see there's a huge size difference so far. The mallards bills are so long they seem very exaggerated in length compared to the call's.

This is day 24 for the gray call hen sitting on 10 eggs, fingers crossed they all hatch. 2 of the eggs I put in there because I started a batch of a dozen in the incubator the same day i noticed the gray call hen had started to set. 10 days later I candled my incubator eggs and only 2 were fertile so i snuck them into the gray call's nest, she seemed happy to have 2 more.

Have 20 shipped call eggs from Duck Creek Poulty Place in Indiana, just candled them on day 16 and still looking good, all alive and well. Pretty good out of 21 fertile eggs to start with. I've got another thread going on trying the dry incubating method on call duck eggs to get a better hatch.

I can sex all the ducklings by voice already, sounds like they are mostly hens! One of the mallard's is definitely a hen and the other definitely a drake. Will keep the mallard hen to set call eggs under her when she goes broody, she'll be big enough to cover more little call eggs.

Let her cross with the call drakes and I'll have teenie tiny flying mallards around here for sure.

 

[Miss Lydia]

7? so pretty

Should have read your previous post so there are 8

 

[duckmeister]

Latest hatch, my Holderread's gray call hen hatched these guys, (5 hatched and 5 rotton eggs ) The little gray duckling is hers for sure, but not sure where the bibbed ducklings came from, i have grays and whites, how did i get bibbed? Oh well, love them anyway, especially the litte gray duckling.

Turned my hatched about April 20-22 ducklings out with the adults and put the new babies and mama in the private shed, am shocked to find my largest ducklings are already as big as my smallest Holderreads adult birds. Definitely not show quality, but i love em anyway.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Latest hatch, my Holderread's gray call hen hatched these guys, (5 hatched and 5 rotton eggs

) The little gray duckling is hers for sure, but not sure where the bibbed ducklings came from, i have grays and whites, how did i get bibbed? Oh well, love them anyway, especially the litte gray duckling.

Turned my hatched about April 20-22 ducklings out with the adults and put the new babies and mama in the private shed, am shocked to find my largest ducklings are already as big as my smallest Holderreads adult birds. Definitely not show quality, but i love em anyway.

They are so cute and tiny. as far as bibbed well I have Muscovy's and out of some ducklings I have hatched in the last 3 yrs I got 2 barred I never had Barred so only thing I can think of is somewhere in the family tree way back there must have been some barred. Make sense?

Be sure to keep the pics coming I'd like to see them once they begin to feather in.