There Once (briefly) was an Ugly Duckling

Following on from the previous post about rearing chickens for meat, today I move onto ducks.

We breed our own Muscovy Ducks for meat (which are actually closer to geese than ducks), hatching the eggs under broody hens. It keeps the hens happy. The ducklings grow up with their adoptive mum and live their life in with the chickens, free-ranging over the smallholding. We make no effort to grow them especially fast, but by about four months old they are big enough to eat. A male Muscovy has a deceptively good amount of meat on it, quite easily doing six meals.

One of the Muscovy girls

We occasionally use a couple of 

Muscovy eggs to keep a broody hen happy.

These two were born on 21st July. 

Six Muscovy ducklings under the care of the three Silkie hens

This year we are trying something quite different. We came upon the chance to purchase some meat strain Pekin ducks. This was when we extended the opportunity to the rest of our smallholders club and ended up with 174 ducklings in a stable for a brief time.

We kept twenty of the ducklings for ourselves. Six will be kept as egg layers, the rest are for meat. Their growth rate has been quite astonishing. They came to us at 10-12 days old and we kept them safely in a stable until they were four weeks old. Their first day out saw them diving head first into a rather green pond, but the subsequent preening brought their soft white breast feathers through. Suddenly they started to look like ducks rather than ducklings.

That was only a week ago but the ducks are growing daily. They should taste nice as they have found the raspberries! Luckily there are plenty growing beyond their reach.

Anyhow, the best way to illustrate their rapid growth is to leave you with a series of dated pictures.

23rd June 10-12 days old

23rd June 10-12 days old

5th July 22-24 days old

9th July 4 weeks old

13th July 4 weeks 4 days

16th July 5 weeks old

20th July 5 weeks 4 days

22nd July 6 weeks old