my ancona ducks

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I have 6 ducks right now. Two drakes and 4 hens. I am going to hatch eggs and cull one of the drakes shortly as he has been two rough with the hens. I am also going to rehome two of my older hens and replace them with ducklings. i hatched ducklings one time before and ended up with a single hen and a three drakes. I believe I turned the eggs to late in the incubation and negatively effected my hatch rate as most of the eggs fully developed yet only a few hatched. I started keeping ducks spring 2020. I thought it would be fun to start a duck journal here but there wont be too many entries as the ducks largely play in mud puddles and quack. Today however I come home from work and found a duck with a wing covered with blood and a few odd droplets around the yard. This has never happened before. However, they all seem happy and have no apparent wounds so whatever duck stupidity led to this seems to have passed. just in case he bore responsibility the drake who was out with the hens was locked up. My ducks are anconas.

I left for work yesterday night and the ducks where not locked up i put them away but first had to chip a frozen duck turd that had frozen the door shut away with my knife. One of the ducks was nibbling my sleeve and had to be shooed off. When I got home their water was frozen and they were standing on the ice of their pool. I gave them liquid water and broke the ice on the pool. this caused ducks to attempt to flee when the ice started cracking scrambling on ice. Very funny. both took flight and one landed in an empty water trough and got stuck.

the ducks where amazingly hungry today so I gave them three scoops instead of too to silence the honking. I have also put the pot of vegetables on a milk crate and put their food dish in the milk crate. hopefully they will be unable to poop in their food or knock over the flower pot. the previous week I had a large flower pot of food scraps in there run with the thought that I would give them some everyday. That was thwarted when the ducks tipped it over and ate and trampled everything in a single night. For never was there a more greedy or short sighted animal as the duck.

the plan succeeded and the ducks can no longer eat of the forbidden fruit.

 

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I opened the remaining three eggs today. I had one that pipper internaly only, one that never pipped and, another egg that became contaminated. The chicks I have all look to be blue and black and they are the cutest little guys. They where from a lavender hen with a black drake. All the drakes shold be split to chocolate.

I have the ducks to bread a chocolate drake and then I can have sex linked hens. I have made a crude infographic of the genes I have. I believe the information is correct.

 

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Thanks for reading twocrows

today I looked out the window and saw three hens sleeping together. I was down one. I went on the hunt. Ducks are never more than a few feet from each other willingly. I poked around then went and counted the ducks again. As I was contemplating my next move the missing duck walked out from behind a bucket approximately 1 foot from my feet quacking sleepily mystery solved. Yesterday my more cunning duck broke into the garden and had to be ejected from the area. I am unsure of the amount of damage but that duck was absolutely covered in mud and that does not bode well...

the ducks I think went into the neighbor's property today. I didn't see them when I went out. I was going to hunt them down when they came running into view. I saw a laughing woman peaking after them. They were black with mud. It looked like a mud mine had exploded under their stompy feet. They are now locked up for a bit.

The ducks are laying more now. I got my first green egg. Those are the ones I want to hatch so soon I can start filling the incubator. I have been getting some soft-shelled eggs. The ducks have oyster shells but I'm not sure if they are eating them. so, I mixed some in with their feed along with a scoop of brewers yeast. The ducks have their fancies. Last year I rationed the oyster shells as the ducks where eating more than a cup a day and that seemed like more than needed. One of my cats killed two young rats today. Good cat. I fiddled with the door of the coop where I think the rats squeeze in at night. it should no longer be a rat door now. while I was working one of the ducks was honking away and wouldn't be quite when I shushed her. I caught her and held her a bit as a punishment for incessant honking. I separated the drakes and put his favorite hen with the imprisoned drake. I want to collect eggs from those two anyway.

I obtained more scraps for the ducks and refilled their bucket. I need to finish building my compost bin soon. I got three eggs from four hens so I think I'm back in the egg game. my green egg is soft again today but hopefully if it is a calcium issue and is resolved soon. I fed it back to the ducks. I bought a better thermometer for the incubator. The free drake managed to squeeze under the fence for the sole purpose of battling the other drake presumably over his lone hen leaving the other 3 hens alone. Selfish creatures. They are both back to being locked up with each other and have zero hens each.

 

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I had my incubator filled full of eggs but dumped them at 7 days as I did not see veins when candling. I think I kept the boys and girls seperated to long. Ducks do not retain sperm as long as I thought they did. I am now collecting eggs for another attempt. I put the females abd males together again 2 days ago so I should hopefully get fertile eggs again. It should take about a week to get a clutch from the two hens I want to hatch from. There is a falcon that I often see in the area. It was hanging around in the duck yard and I finaly got close enough to potentialy identify it. It looks to be a merlin. That is a releif as it is a very small raptor. I was always a little worried it would get hungry for duck eventualy. It seems it eats songbirds instead. The issue with soft shelled eggs seems to have resolved.

 

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I have veins in my newest batch of eggs. This is day 3. The pictures are a little blurry due to the monumental cheapness of my phone. I tossed 2 eggs for being wrong. On seemed to have a broken air sac and another had what appeared to be a bubble. That leaves me 13 in another few days ill check for more bad eggs

 

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I tossed four more eggs a week later. I think they where cloudy. I don't quite remember. of the nine eggs six have now hatched. the last three are in the incubator but I'm not sure if they will open up. I'll know in a few days. this is day 27 so they are early. I'm happy with 6 of 9 hatching.

One of my hen's laid a few more soft shelled eggs.

 

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I let the ducks into the garden to trample around for a bit and destroy stuff. I also let the ducklings take a swim since it has been super warm out. I fiddled with the worm bin and let the ducks murder some worms and they really appreciated the gesture

 

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my ducklings have their adult voices. I have two hens and four drakes. My old drake is still separated because of his behaviour. I sold three old hens and they look very happy in their new home. The new owner has a pond for them to play in. They wanted a few more hens to balance their sex ratio. I am going to attempt to sell the 4 baby drakes and if not duck soup. We kept our little runty duck pancake. she is 3 this year. They did manage to escape and destroy my water feature last week.

 

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I gave two of the drakes away and just today butchered the other two. They where starting to become wretched creatures. In the words of the queen of hearts off with their heads. The little hens just started laying eggs and I have two small green eggs now. I planted my fall garden a week or two ago and its starting to sprout the ducks lust over it.

This is bubbles she is suck a pretty little duck

These are the three hens I have now

And here are two eggs I got today. I didn't see any yesterday but I just glanced. Hopefully one is from each baby hen

 

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I was out in my yard moving plants around. I started a strawberry patch and put a few remaining runners around my baby apple tree. I am hoping they start growing all over the duck yard. I also put a thornless trailing blackberry up there and moved two perenial kale plants with chicken wire collars up. I do not care for the taste of those particular cultivars so they are now the ducks kale. I also fixed my garbage fence as the ducks where escaping and tipping over my onions as a new favorite pastime.