After raising Chickens, Turkeys, and Guineas we decided last spring it was time to get some ducks. Once we did a little research we came across the Khaki Campbell breed and next thing you know we have six ducklings! We learned quickly that they didn't like us all that much but over time through food they warmed up enough to where they would take food out of our hand.
Unfortunately our duck population dwindled due to the predators we have living in the middle of the woods and we were left with two hens. Of course it was then that we realized it was time to get more. This time we decided to get a Male or in duck terms a drake. The drake we got was grown and about the same age as our hens so they got along great. Unfortunately later in the weeks we lost another hen and were left with just our drake and hen. Since then they have been the perfect pair and this spring they hatched their first ducklings!
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Once our hen started laying we started collecting the eggs to put in our incubator and whatever she laid afterwards we watched her put in her nest. So we set our eggs and waited and waited and waited some more. Finally after coming to the realization that our eggs in the incubator weren't going to hatch we moved on and started keeping a close eye on our Hen or as I like to call her Momma Duck. Since she didn't start sitting on her eggs until after we set ours in the incubator we figured we still had a good chance she would hatch some and sure enough about a week later we had 12 baby ducklings!
We decided to leave the ducklings with Momma Duck until she started not showing interest in them and leaving them out in the open. At one point I even looked out my back window to see her quacking across the back yard with a line of ducklings behind her and our 90lb chocolate labs nose right in the last ducklings rear! Thankfully our Lab is a big baby and loves all her farm friends but after that we weren't too confident Momma Duck would keep them as safe as we'd like so for now we have taken them from her. With that said they will be reunited later but for now we are loving every second of playing with our new ducklings!
