Our Khaki Campbell Ducks

We were given a few duck eggs by Teresa and Ivan Harrison. Linda brought them home and we moved an incubator of Regina's from the ostrich shed to our garage and placed the eggs in the incubator. We set the temperature at 93 degrees and had the fan running to circulate air inside the incubator. We also placed a cake pan inside with water to keep the humidity higher as per instructions found online. We set the switch to on to start the wire baskets rocking back and forth to 'turn' the eggs as the directions stated. A little over 30 days later and the first egg began hatching.
 
I noticed the egg first and told Linda and Stacey to come out and see the duck as it was hatching out of the egg. We left the little duck in the incubator for a few hours longer until the down was fluffy and dry. At that time, I told Linda to come out and take the duck out of the incubator, but she refused. I had to get Stacey out there to take it out so I could take a picture of the baby duck. Stacey wasn't too happy about it and wasn't sure of what to do with the duck. Check out the expression on her face!
 
We placed the little duck in a cardboard box and waited for the next one to hatch. We left it in there and went to town to eat and when we came home, we heard a cheeping in the garage, but couldn't find the little duck. We finally found the duck and figured out the duck had climbed out through the handhold cut in the side of the cardboard box. Linda and Brent named the duck Houdini because it had escaped from the box we were using as a pen.

It took another day or so before other baby ducks cracked their shells, but overnight there ended up being two more hatch, for a total of three. That was all the eggs that ever hatched, so after about two weeks we ended up tossing the rest of the eggs into the garbage. The little ducks were cheeping like baby chickens and we found out that we could feed them chicken feed, so we bought a 50 lb bag of 'Chicken Starter Food'.
 
They gobbled up the chicken feed and started growing. Soon, Linda bought a inflatable kids' pool and then we had baby ducks swimming around in the garage. They continued to grow and their feathers eventually took the place of the baby duck down.
 
If you noticed that there were three and now there are only two, here's what happened. We put the cage outside the back door and the second night the ducks were outside, something came on the porch and ate the yellow and black duck inside the cage. There was mud on the porch, on top of the cage and tracks all around. We moved the cage back inside the garage, and now the ducks go to the garage door and wait for us to open it for them to go in the cage. This happens every night as soon as it gets dark. A funny part of our duck story is, we named them Bobber and Houdini, both male names, but they both ended up being females. Each duck was laying an egg a day during the summer so we were getting two a day, but this winter we have only found one egg a day.

When you come to our farm, beware, we will feed you duck eggs for breakfast!

Khaki Campbell Ducks