Each spring the animals on the Homestead sense the time to mate and reproduce. Female ducks and other fowl to include chickens lay eggs year round and if a male of their kind is with them there will be fertile eggs in the mix but the females may not go broody. Our Khaki Campbell ducks as well as our Pekins are hardy egg layers and yet not broody so we select eggs to incubate now and then.
March 5th, we placed six duck eggs in our Brinsea Mini Auto Advance Incubator to display how it works to a group visiting our farm and continued to keep it running. We candled the eggs a few days earlier and saw that at least three had an active em. Within a few days twenty eight days later, right on time, the eggs began hatching.
One at at a time the eggs began to hatch and the sound of peeping filled the room. Each day the hatching continued until Thursday when the final two eggs hatched. Our larger incubator is filled with duck eggs that will hatch just before Easter. The majority of our duck eggs are available for sale, $5.50/dozen, and are extremely delicious. We’ve found them to be very rich and excellent for baking. The new ducklings are also for sale on a straight run basis, $5.00 per duckling, the price increases as they age.
