In search of ducklings

Our search for some more Aylesbury ducklings has continued since our last post... unfortunately without success. There seems to be a real shortage of pure Aylesbury ducks, with many breeders having crossed them with other large white ducks such as Cherry Valleys or Pekins. Whilst this results in good utility ducks that lay lots of eggs and produce good meat, it only makes the pure Aylesburyeven rarer.

That’s not to say that there are no breeders of pure Aylesbury ducks, but they are very few and far between. Our best option at the moment is an eight-hour round trip to visit the breeder that we bought the hatching eggs from, but we'd like to avoid such a long journey if possible (for both our sake and the ducklings). We know of a couple of other breeders but they're located equally long distances away so we're spending a little more time exhausting more local options before we start planning a road trip.

The good news is that our two existing ducklings are going from strength to strength. At nearly four weeks old they're starting to feather up and we've been letting let them roam around our garden on sunnier days.

This week we'll remove the heater from their brooder and switch them fully over to growers pellets as they'll be old enough to be moved off the crumb feed they've been getting. In a couple of more weeks they should be fully feathered and ready to go out to the field. Hopefully by then we'll have been able to source some more ducklings to keep them company.