A hen and her ducklings

Yes, I know. Chicks, not ducklings, are supposed to come from hens.

But this is what happened when I put some duck eggs I bought from a local farmer's market under one of our broody hens.

28 days later.....quack quack...they hatch! This morning, in fact. And this is the first photo of me moving aside Mamma hens big derriere to reveal the newly hatched ducklings. There were two by the time I took this photo, and another one hatched later on today.

One egg didn't properly hatch, and another will probably happen tonight. Meaning we'll have 4 little ducklings being mothered by a chicken. What she'll do when she realises all her children have webbed feet, Lord only knows. Probably blame their father.

In case you didn't know... ducks eggs have an incubation period of about 28 days, which is longer than a chicken's egg, being 21 days. It was pretty fortunate that Mother Hen stayed sitting on them for that long and didn't get bored after three weeks and walk off.

I kept Mother Hen and the duck eggs in her brooding box in the chicken coop shared with about 10 other chickens. I noticed she had been broody for a few days, and wasn't sitting on any eggs, so thought I'd give it a go with some free-range ducks eggs. I gathered they were likely to have been fertilised being free-range, and I was right.

So Mother Hen sat there for a full 4 weeks, and just after some tweeting was heard from inside one of the eggs, it was time to move her to her new home - and safe out of the way of the other chickens who could attack the hatchlings. As I have learned, as soon as tweeting noises are made from inside the egg, the mother hen, or duck, will at this moment bond with the 'babies' and becomes protective over them. If you move her too soon before any noise has come, there is a risk she will reject the eggs. So an egg-timer is essential! I had transferred her and the eggs several days previously into a cardboard box I hashed together, and this went inside the brooding box. Meaning that when it was moving day, last sunday, I could just carry her, in the cardboard box, to my new purpose-built chicken Ark.

see photo:

The Ark was made for me just two weeks ago by some Polish builders. I finished wood-staining it just two days ago. In fact it's still a bit wet, but I'm hoping the tenants won't complain. You can see there are two nesting/laying boxes one end, and a perch for...erm....perching (at night).

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The other end is open to the grass and enclosed by chicken wire, though this is mainly to keep them safe from predators while they're still young. As older birds, I'll let them out to strut their stuff around the garden, and become truly free-range. I discovered today that the best deterrant against foxes is actually male human urine. This is handy to know, as I now have a valid excuse for taking a pee in the garden.

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I plan to put a small water trough/tray in the Ark too, so the ducklings can have a go at swimming. I know that two of the ducklings are 'Indian Runners' - which are hilarious to watch. Apparently they're not too fussed by water. I can't remember the breed of the third duckling that hatched this afternooon and don't therefore know if it loves a swim; but I'm hoping that, despite their foreign foster mother, they'll all take to it like water off a duck's back.

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Anyway, it's all very eggciting.

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quack.