Ducks

When my husband and I started talking about the animals we were going to have on the homestead. Ducks were one of the first we decided on. But finding a source for the ducklings proved to be hard for us in Northern BC. I ordered 30 duckings in April for a May 10th hatch date. Those 30 arrived to us May 12th with a loss of 5 in transit and then over the course of 24 hours another 9 passed away from the stress of being shipped. I was devastated but the hatchery was great and shipped out replacements. Only thing is with the replacements( they mailed 15) only 5 of those survived transport. So our start with ducks has not gone well. We ended up with a total of 15 now.

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So that brings me to this post. This past weekend we sent some of our ducks to freezer camp. 6 to be exact and the remaining 9 are doing well but we will be cutting that down to 5 to over winter. 4 hens and drake. The ones I’ve chosen to stay exhibit the traits and qualities that is recommended for that breed. Speaking of breed…. The breed we ended up getting are Pekin ducks. they are the big white ones with bright orange bills and feet. Think Donald Duck. They are a fairly docile breed and do well with routine. They are just getting brave enough now to venture past their open door to go foraging for bugs.

Photo by Alexandr Podvalny on Pexels.com

I have enjoyed having them on the homestead and the reason why we are keeping some back is to hopefully start breeding them ourselves. Pekin’s aren’t ones to go broody so we will most likely have to incubate any eggs we wish to hatch. The other neat fact about Pekins ducks is it is unusually hard to tell the male from female. The big difference that we found is the drakes are larger in body stature then the hens. Also the drakes when they are mature enough to start breeding they get one little tail feather that curls, which is super cute. I would like to find either Khaki Campbell or Welsh Harlequinn ducks to add to our flock. I have read great things about those two breeds and now that we’ve had the big ones, I’d like to get into ones that are a little smaller.

Is there anything you’d like to know about ducks? I’d love to share the information I’ve found on them with you. I will write up another ducks blog and post it here in a bit. Now that the weather is cooling down and our garden is done for the year I have more time to devote to communicating with you my followers. I really appricate the time you take out of your day to either read a blog post, catch up with me on Intsagram (www.instagram.com/shepherdsvalleyhomestead), Facebook (www.facebook.com/shepherdsvalleyhomestead) and Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiheXsA72BD488rgPF2251g)

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