Back to 'Plan A'

Looking back over our blog posts from the last month you’d be forgiven for thinking that we’ve become a bit obsessed with Aylesbury ducks. After hatching out two ducklings from our first batch of eggs we’ve been on the lookout for some more to join them – without a great deal of success.

Having scoured the internet for a local supplier of ducklings, last week we decided to bite the bullet and go back to Plan A. Well, almost Plan A.

Knowing that our previous incubator was too small for Aylesbury eggs we bought a larger incubator and placed an order for another dozen hatching eggs. The eggs arrived last Wednesday and, after leaving them overnight to recover from their journey, we put them into the new incubator.

The good news is that the new incubator is much bigger and can accommodate even the largest of the Aylesbury eggs so we’ll have no issues with automatic turning this time around. On the downside, the new incubator doesn’t automatically control its temperature, which led to the incubator’s temperature rising above the critical 100°F on the first afternoon when the sun came out. We now know we need to keep a close eye on the incubator as the ambient temperature fluctuates.

After noticing the high temperature we quickly cooled the eggs down so there hopefully won’t be any permanent damage to the developing embryos. We won’t know until this Friday when we candle them after eight days so for now we just need to keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best.

In other duck news, our first ducklings are now nearly six weeks old (where does the time go?) and so we moved them into their new home in our field yesterday. After their first night outside they seem to be doing really well and are enjoying their spacious new surroundings (as you can see below).