New Egg Ducks

Now that the meat ducks are out on the pasture, we have put our brooder back into business. This time, we are raising egg ducks.

We bought 4 Khaki Campbells known for good egg laying abilities.

Then Ellie asked if she could have a “show duck.”

So we got her a little Magpie hen. They are also apparently excellent foragers, and decent egg layers.

The best way to prep a show duck, is just to hang out with it until it gets over its fear of you. Snacks help.

We rounded out our flock today by adding 4 Blue Swedish ducks, also known for foraging ability and laying blue or green eggs.

The problem with foraging ducks, is they like to lay their eggs in their own hidden nests, not in the lovely egg boxes we built them. Hopefully we will train the new egg ducks to think of the duck-mobile as home over the summer. These will reach maturity in November/December time frame, so they probably won’t start laying until next spring.

The anconas got tired of their segment of the orchard, so they found their way into the goose side of the orchard a couple times and got beaten on pretty hard by the geese, so the settled for finding their way into the garden. I am okay with that as long as they eat slug and don’t eat my baby plants. But we really need to get them on a rotation.