Its been a long time since I've posted here. Since we have new babies I thought I'd share our story. We got 3 runner girls about 6 years ago and hand raised them from day old ducklings. One of them hatched fertile eggs we snuck under her when she got broody, about 3 years ago at age 3. So after giving away 3 feathered out babies we had 5 runner girls. Last year we lost our friendliest duck, one of the older 3 girls. When one of our younger girls went broody this spring we put fertile Welch harlequin eggs under her. Our plan was to let her raise most of the babies to rehome, but hand rear 2 girls so that they would be more friendly pets to add to our flock. She did a great job and hatched out 6 of her seven eggs, but something went wrong last night. After seeing the first duckling yesterday when we checked this morning we found 3 fluffy babies and 3 perfectly formed hatched out babies that didn't make it. One was fluffy and two still had wet looking feathers. So very sad. We took all three living babies inside worrying about their safety with mama. After a couple of hours searching for babies she seemed ok. The babies are doing great. So fun to have little peepers in the house again! I know you can sex by bill with Welch harlequins pretty accurately in the first days; what do you all think? I'm hoping for 1 girl, but am worried it's 3 boys.
