selling ducklings and breeding questions

[Duck mommy 2019]

next year i am planning on letting my khaki girl hatch out some ducklings. she is separated from the drakes all the time, but what breed would make the cutest ducklings with her? pekin, rouen, another khaki, or a khaki/rouen mix? also what age should i rehome them? i’m planning on keeping 1-2 girls. also how much do i sell them for? i don’t care about the money, but i also don’t want to give people free ducklings that they won’t take care of/will eat! also if my new rouen ends up being a girl (sadly i’m pretty sure he’s a boy) what would be a good mix breed?

 

[Floof]

if i cannot sell them all, i know someone who will take any extra drakes

How many extra drakes can they take though? If you make a habit of hatching multiple clutches of eggs then you may be inundated with males. Either sell them as straight run and accept that some will probably be eaten to keep a healthy male to female ratio or sell them sexed and over run your friend with males. Males are hard to rehome and it can be hard to accept but most will find their way into someone's belly. You will also need a plan for dealing with necessary culling. Some birds hatch unhealthy, some are unable to be saved, and you need to have the grit to dispatch them humanely when that happens.

I have bred, hatched, and sold chickens over the years and had to toughen up the hard way. Not everything will go smoothly and it's better to hope for the best but have a plan for the worst.

Since you are young I want to encourage you to try out your hatching business but advise that you start small JUST IN CASE things don't go as planned. Start with maybe 8 eggs. Not all will hatch so assume you will have about 5 or 6 babies. You can advertise them on craigslist the last week before they hatch so that you have homes already lined up. If it turns out that you enjoy doing this then you can make or buy an incubator and gradually do larger clutches.

 

[TomCahalan]

Once a duckling leaves you hands, you have no right to decide how it will be used. If you don't want to help people feed their families, then don't sell drakes to them. Sex them and sell only the females. It is very unlikely that campbell females will be eaten, since they are excellent layers.

Ducks lay many eggs and there isn't enough room in the world for them to all have good lives. Nearly all of them have to die an early death.

Take your typical songbird for example. A pair of songbirds will set two clutches of 5 eggs each. 10 chicks. 9 of them will die before their 1st birthday. One of the parents will die that year too. The result? One parent survives, one child survives. The year started with two birds, and ends with two birds. That is how the population stays stable.

Every time you rescue a wild animal, another wild has to die from starvation. That's just how life works. With domestic animals, it is a bit different, for example you have a friend who can take drakes.... for now. At some point you're going to saturate that outlet. Then what? Now you have to stop hatching.

 

[AAcres]

I sold some of my ducklings recently (first hatch for me and first time selling ducklings). They are khaki/runner crosses. I sold them for $10 each to other poultry keepers so I knew they were going to experienced owners and not people who just want a cute duckling.
$10 per duckling is the average rate around where I am. I sold them at about 2-3 days old.

 

[Jpat]

People love pure bred kahkis for eggs, that would be a selling point for you

You could mix pekin and kahki and sell them as mid size meat birds and egg layers

 

[Jpat]

I had some hatch ill try and find pictures

 

[rp riley]

Everyone around me sells the ducklings for about 6 dollars a piece, also I would suggest pure khaki campbells because people love them for their egg laying capability. you might just have to sell them as unsexed because males are sometimes pretty hard to sell. Since khaki campbells are a good sized duck some people will buy males to eat

 

[Duck mommy 2019]

How many extra drakes can they take though? If you make a habit of hatching multiple clutches of eggs then you may be inundated with males. Either sell them as straight run and accept that some will probably be eaten to keep a healthy male to female ratio or sell them sexed and over run your friend with males. Males are hard to rehome and it can be hard to accept but most will find their way into someone's belly. You will also need a plan for dealing with necessary culling. Some birds hatch unhealthy, some are unable to be saved, and you need to have the grit to dispatch them humanely when that happens.

I have bred, hatched, and sold chickens over the years and had to toughen up the hard way. Not everything will go smoothly and it's better to hope for the best but have a plan for the worst.

Since you are young I want to encourage you to try out your hatching business but advise that you start small JUST IN CASE things don't go as planned. Start with maybe 8 eggs. Not all will hatch so assume you will have about 5 or 6 babies. You can advertise them on craigslist the last week before they hatch so that you have homes already lined up. If it turns out that you enjoy doing this then you can make or buy an incubator and gradually do larger clutches.

my friend has just a drake flock, so she could probably take lots of drakes. and i know a lot of people who would want just two ducks so i could give them two drakes. i would honestly keep them if i needed too (once we move we are making separate areas for each of our drakes) just so they don’t get eaten

 

[EverythingDucks]

Here it is for now

 

[Floof]

It occured to me that you might consider breeding ducks that would allow you to color sex the ducklings. Vent sexing is not the easiest thing to learn if you don't have someone to show you how but you can select your breeders to allow you to sex ducklings based on down color. Males that carry the chocolate gene bred to females of any other color except white should allow you to color sex the offspring.

You would still need to find a way to home the males but now you will know, with certainty, how many you have.