Ducklings

We have been getting very few duck eggs. This is creating problems on a number of fronts. Firstly, we are unable to satisfy the demand for duck eggs.Secondly, we have too few eggs toincubate and hatch so we have new stock for next year. We reluctantly decided that the solution was to buy some fertile eggs or some ducklings.

We found some ducklings for sale yesterday: aylesburys, 5 days old, in Chilton, near Darlington. So we headed down to buy them. We got 11. Back home we put them into the brooder box which had 5 chicks in it. They were old enough to be moved to the nursery in the back garden.

As today was sunny and warm, we decided to put them in a pen in the back garden. Alas, we found they were small enough to escape through the bars of the pen. Half an hour of rounding them up followed, including crawling under the decking of our neighbour. We eventually recovered them all. After wrapping the pen in chickenwire, the ducklings went back in. They particularly appreciated the deep bowl of water that allowed them to swim rather than just paddle. Tonight they will go back into the brooder box but they can't stay there for long. The chicken eggs in one of our incubators are currently hatching so the ducklings will be quickly acclimatised to being outdoors. In about a month we will move them to the livestock plot where the adult ducks live.