Friday, August 29, 2008

Duck Nest!


Well, we have found that ducks usually don't lay all that many eggs in a month, and they tend to chose different spots to lay on any given day.

But recently when one of our Cayuga females kept disappearing for several hours a day, we were pretty sure she'd found a hide-away place to lay. We searched for several days, but could not figure out where she was dropping eggs.

One evening Steven just happened to find it -- it was very well hidden, although not 10 feet from the house! Nestled up against a tree truck and behind our current bushes, she had actually taken time to build a complete "nest"! In it were 11 eggs already!


We left it a couple days to see if she would actually "set" enough to incubate them, but she abandoned the nest, so we eventually gathered the eggs (but now we know where to look for new ones!

As you can see the duck eggs are gradually getting a little lighter in the shell color than the first ones I posted. They are more of a dirty gray color now.

And just because I like photos, I'll end with a shot of one of Steven's green bell peppers from the garden!

1 comment:

Fabio Parodi said...

Hello,
I have 11 rouen ducks that are now about 6 months old. I'm hoping the hens will start laying soon and was wondering if you do anything to encourage nesting or if you feed them something special.

Thanks,
Fabio