My husband gave me a gift a few months ago- the gift of making babies whenever I want to. Wait! Don't leave! He got me a Hovabator incubator with an egg turner so I can hatch my own eggs.
This is the most fun I've ever had with an appliance....I've hatched three batches of eggs so far. Today my Ancona Duck Eggs arrived so I am waiting for them to reach room temperature so I can put them into the Bator.
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| The Anconas are the Black and White spotted ones. |
I have two Anconas now, and they are really great ducks. They are cheerful and put up well with their pen. It's too dangerous to let a duck free range in my neighborhood, so I need to have animals who are ok with living in a pen. And I'm getting lots of eggs. But I wanted to introduce some lighter patches into my strain of Ancona. So I bought some hatching eggs from a lady in Lawrence Ks via Ebay. They came in the mail today. There are nine of them. I found 15 in my own ducks nest. So I am going to incubate 24 eggs for 25 to 28 days. If half of them hatch, that would be really good. I would be inundated with ducks. I will probably get far fewer.
Good luck with your hatch I've never had good results with eggs from Ebay, or more correctly eggs that have been posted, I suspect the eggs go through a verity of temperatures during transportation.The last eggs I bought this way were Buff Orpington, out of six eggs only two hatched, so very expensive chicks, one was a cock and one was a pullet so I have been able to improve the strains I already have.
ReplyDeleteIs it not possible for you to have electric poultry fencing for your ducks, I suspect it would be much cheaper in the US than it is here where we pay 150 euros for 50m but it works at keeping all our birds safe from the many predators we have here.
I am looking into the electric fence. I'm glad to hear that it works for you. My husband is skeptical. The worst of our predators are stray dogs, and he's afraid they would jump over a 4 ft fence. I think if they got zapped a couple of times they wouldn't try it. We also have Chicken hawks who almost constantly circle above our meadow, even though they have never had a clear shot at any of my hens. I think they would pick off one at a time, whereas dogs kill every chicken they can find. Our electricy isn't too expensive- we live in an area with hydroelectric power.
ReplyDeleteStray dogs? I though the US had strict laws on dogs, but you are right, once zapped they would not come back again. Poultry fencing keeps foxes out OK. I would be more worried about the Chicken Hawks, I looked this up and find that three types of birds are called Chicken Hawks, the first two are no threat, the third one is the red tailed hawk which is a big bird and has been known to take chickens but not often.When we lived in Spain we had a variety of birds of prey including Eagles, we only once had a bird taken, by a Bustard which is about the same size as the red tailed hawk, after that we confined the birds into a very large run with light weight bean netting above, the mesh is about four inches square and made of plastic. Try to identify which bird of prey you have. Wikipedia has all the details on the three species.Just put in Chicken hawk Bird.
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