Brand new run = We have built a block paved area for them with a proper pond!

New duck aivery with block paving and pond.

We still need to put them away at night because they are too noisy in the early hours to leave out, especially when it’s a hot weekend night and all the neighbors have their windows open and the ducks have woken at 0600 on a Sunday and are quacking their head off because they are shagging in the pond….

Monster Duck Egg

One of the ducks laid a crazy huge egg, it weighed 164g with two yolks. See Paula holding it next to a normal one in the photo below, she was also the one that took great pleasure in cooking it and eating it for herself.As

warmonkey said: Jesus Christ, it’ll have an ass like a bowler hat now.

We put Tyranasarous Rex and Cat Duck out for their first whole day outside with the other six adult ducks (which were older by about a week) and we got home to find them deaded.

We figured that the three oldest ducklings had integrated with the six fully grown ducks so well that there would be absolutely no problem putting the last two ducklings outside with them when they reached the same age. So on a Sunday morning we took the ducks from the box they were living-in under the stairs and released them into the big hutch we built a fair few months ago now. They had food and water for the day so we left to go Alton Towers with Paula’s family. When we retuned later that day at 8pm on what was quite a warm day really, I went to check on the ducklings in the waning autumn light and I couldn’t find them anywhere. After not being able to find them I got a bit perplexed and went back to the house to inform Paula that I couldn’t find them and I thought that they had escaped. It took me a few moments of thinking but then I realised that even though they were young – they weren’t so small that they could squeeze out of one of the small holes around the cage or under the duck house. I went back to the cage to seek the little critters out, taking with me this time; a torch. The first thing I did this time after lifting the lid on the cage was look in the water tub with the torch and I noticed a glint of yellow beneath the water line. The two ducks had obviously got inside the tub and because the water level had got so low from the other ducks drinking it they had been unable to get out of it. We think they got cold being in the water, which was only about 2 or 3 inches deep after I had removed their cold and dead carcasses from it. Even though the water was only sooo shallow (the ducks could stand up quite easily in that) Paula informed me that she had read up that ducklings need to retain quite a high body temperature of about 30°C.

So our potential ducks out of 7 eggs is now down to 3 ducklings.

Good news is that we have had an egg out of the adult ducks everyday since our first one was laid the other week! We think it’s just the one duck laying at the moment and she lays it in the same place every morning for us to pick out and eat ^_^

FYI, Tyranasarous Rex hatched first and about two days later Cat Duck was born, Paula suggested naming her duck after Little Miss  because she’s so far resisited eating any of them but a day later I suggested naming it Tyler after the cat that got ran over. …Because of this confusion I’m going to call it Cat Duck to save arguments.

Anyway, see below for the latest batch of photos.

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Paula with the incubator

We left them incubating at paula’s parents house and Paula’s mother carefully turned them several times a day while we were away in Hungary. The day we got back Paula wished to candle the eggs and inspect them, she dropped one and then we were down to six. Frank died as he was hatching which was a little bit sad, Jo was the first to successfully hatch, then followed by Izzy and lastly Truck. There are still two more incubating and they are due to hatch in the next couple of days. See the photos below.

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• They’ve finally gone to the top of the garden and away from the house, we can finally have the windows open on hot days without the smell of ducks filling the kitchen. The other good thing about this is that the ducks are now on slabs and not wallowing in mud. The white ducks are white again. This happend because I spent £100 to hire a digger with which I then mostly levelled the garden with.
• About three days before we went to Budapest we were woken up at about half one by the ducks quacking loudly from the other end of the garden – I dismissed it as the two white male ducks fighting again and went back to sleep but Paula jumped out of bed and ran to the top of the garden. When she got to the top of the garden she opened the lid to the ducks and a fox jumped out and ran off. It seems that a fox had gotten into their pen through a piece of chick-wire we hadn’t put enough zip-ties on. It’s a good job Paula got out there when she did else I think all of them would have been killed and taken away. It turned out that five of them had suffered injuries with the white ones being worst off with bite marks on their necks and damaged wings. The white ones looked sad for a while and Paula gave them special treatment the next day letting them use the bath and spraying their cuts with TCP. They are all well & happy now and when our <pigeon serial killing> cat stalks past their pen on her walk abouts the odd duck out (Jack) flaps it’s wings quacking at her and chases her of (I think she’s freightend of the ducks – stupid pusscat.) Of note, the only duck that wasn’t bitten by the fox was Jack (he/she’s the duck with the odd markings,) I can’t help but think that Jack was the duck that maybe kept the fox at bay for the five minutes that the fox spent inside the cage?? Apologies for the lack of photos to sit, I didn’t think to take any
• We brought six ducklings in total from Melton Farmers Market and to be honest I expected them to all be males because I couldn’t imagine why anyone would flog ‘em on otherwise. But it’s become obvious that they were not all males. Both of the white ducks have their feather tail curls so they are 100% male. Out of the three Khaki Campbells only one of them is a male with a tail curl, the other two have been clearly identified as female by the black feather on their wings. This is fantastic news as it means we have a set of ducks for mating and laying eggs – both of which they can’t be far off doing. It does mean that the white ducks will be destined for Christmas dinner because if we have too many males they will end up fighting or killing the females (who every said too much sex is a bad thing?) The only conundrum left is we have no idea what sex Jack is…. We don’t even know what breed it is so we can’t find out what the identifying signs are. It’s not got the curly feather so we are banking on it being a girl so far, but it was always the runt duckling so maybe it’s not quite matured yet?
• We have been incubating our own duck eggs Paula brought from the internet and today they finally hatched. The next time I post will be about that no doubt.

Our Ducks 25 July 09

Good news – We think at least one of them is a female duck! We’ve found a black feather on the wing of one of the karkhi campbells, this usually means they are female.

On the other hand we think the two white ducks are male ducks because we think we can see curly tail feathers forming (which is actually quite clear on the photo)

…anyway, I’ll tell you why it’s so important; Male ducks are useless, they aren’t going to supply me with fresh eggs every morning  and we only need one male to fertilise the eggs if we breed them. If it turns out if 5 out of the 6 ducks are males Christmas dinner will be fuelled by roast duck. Anyone fancy helping break their necks come the time? I get the feeling Eric may well come into his own on this occasion.

Baby Ducks in our bath 30th April 2009