Lots of pairs of eyes looked back at us this afternoon when we peered into Banana’s basket in the poultry area. We had Friday as our due date for both her and Berry but by the end of the day Banana had ten ducklings and Berry had four. Both ducks had been sitting on 15 eggs each but a quick candle showed five of Banana’s to be infertile or dead and rather strangely TEN of Berry’s, with most in her case being infertile. We aren’t unduly worried by this as we don’t want to be too ‘overrun’ by ducklings and we are hatching late now PLUS we have the other three ducks sitting on eggs anyway, two clutches due to hatch in the next few days and Pear’s in three weeks.
It looks as though we have a delightful mixture of ducklings from Berry and Banana. They are both pure Muscovies, as is Grape, our drake BUT because ducks can ‘hold’ sperm from a male for three weeks, it is likely that some of the eggs were fertilized by the drake they used to live with before they came to us. That drake was a runner duck and we have already seen a couple of ducklings with completely dark brown heads (one is clearly visible in the photo) which could well be the ‘runner’ colouring!! It is going to be lovely to see how they develop.
Due to previous outside ‘disappearances’, we are going to keep our duckling families inside for a while until the ducklings get a bit bigger. The ‘Broody Wing’ inside the barn has thus been resurrected and as you can see, Banana and Berry and all their charges were happily ensconced in there this evening!!