We have been getting such a lot of nice soaking rains lately....great for the grass and should make good humidity for the hatching.
I have had 8 ducklings hatch so far and there are quite a few more pipped still. Ducklings are so slow to hatch and even often go over their 28 days, well that is the way these Saxony ducklings work for me!
I put the first 5 that had hatched out in a little duck brooder I had made, they are so killer cute ducklings!
I decided to put in the 25 extra eggs we had on hand and fertility looks great, 24/25 are fertile w/ 3 or 4 having a bit weaker development, they usually quit early on but I have left them in anyhow for now.
I figure I will sell the early hatched ones at Milo May 12 and keep the rest for ourselves. I will seperate the drakes and ducks and raise most of the drakes for the freezer. We like duck meat.
Today it just sprinkled off and on and we rode down and brought up the heifers to make a second cut for the "calving pen". We added 16 heifers that we figured were the closest to calving and took the rest back down to the heifer pasture. When G got home from school I had Samson ready for him and we rode out to the Rastadt pasture to gather in the last of the cows and calves still out there.
One of the cows was Star, his cow and she has the nicest little bull calf this year, black w/ a white half moon on his forehead. We cut out one heifer w/ a calf to keep in the gas well pasture with the other heifers and turned the rest of the cows w/calves, and 3 cows that haven't calved yet into the calving grounds.
Put two more trays of eggs into the incubator today and moved two trays over to the hatcher, they should hatch Sun and Mon. The little Dominique hen is still sitting tight on her 7 eggs, she is doing a great job so far, her chicks are due to hatch Mon, on O's birthday! I am hoping to add a few chicks from the incubator to her clutch so she can raise up a bunch of babies for us.
Making plans for Milo trip the following weekend, we will have to head out early that morning!
