First Ancona Egg

Remember back in June last year I acquired some Ancona ducklings? Well, they are all grown up now and today one of the hens laid the first egg! Finally, it has seemed forever, especially since I rehomed my mixed breed hens last fall and have been eggless since!

First Ancona Egg of the Season

The egg weighed in at 2.5 oz not bad for a first timer. Hopefully we'll be able to hatch some Ancona ducklings here this spring and have home raised Quackers!

A sign of Spring...

Today is a day to mark on the calendar.  I collected my first egg of the year! One of the gracious duck ladies decided the days are long enough and the sun is bright enough to grace the laying box with an egg. It's certainly not because this week is any warmer-it's been rather cold with nightly lows hovering around the zero mark.

The First Egg of the Season

The egg weighed in at 2.1 oz, a pretty average size for my duck eggs.  I'll have to see if I can squeeze in some baking time this weekend-there is nothing like fresh duck eggs when baking!

Sold out!

Where has this month gone? Thank goodness it's a leap year otherwise I'd be posting in March!Spring seems to have come to Texas, flowers are blooming and the dogwoods and fruit trees are blossoming, and my allergies are reawakening from their winter slumber.

Harriet and Carter the ducks have got down to some serious laying this month. Between the two they layed 52 eggs this month. I can't believe it.

Last week despite me cooking Sunday breakfast each week with their bounty and feeding some to the dogs ( I don't tell them I do that), I still had about 3 dozen eggs accumulated. I decided it was time to post some ads on the North Texas craigslist. I posted one on the weekend, and waited and waited. No response. Oh oh...all these eggs and no buyers? Yesterday, I posted on the Dallas craigslist thinking perhaps I could offer to meet up on our weekly skating trips. I checked my email this morning and low and behold I had a buyer! They wanted a full 3 dozen eggs! Alas my hubby had given away 1/2 dozen yesterday (which I think turned into a dozen) so I only had 1 full dozen to spare.

The great news is that they expressed a desire to buy more each week. And to boot, when I checked my messages after egg delivery, I had another lady wanting to buy what I first thought was 10 thousand eggs (that's a whole lot of eggs I thought), but I think her accent made "dozen" sound like "thousand". I'll have to call her back tomorrow and let her know I have none left.

The first dozen delivered

So from no buyers to a waiting list in a day...I'm tickled!

Egg Count

I can actually post an egg count this month. As previously posted here my ducks (or maybe it's just one duck?) finally started laying this last month.

Grand total for the month 9 eggs-that's an egg every second day. And they are off to a good start for February with an egg collected today. I'll be keeping a running tally in the margin of this blog for monthly egg counts and ytd counts.

I really like the ducks, and plan on getting some more. I have been researching duck breeds and have decided to add magpies and call ducks to my flock. I can use both for herding practice. The calls are absolutely adorable and apparently the magpies are pretty good layers.

Unfortunately neither seem in abundance either here or in CO. I have found someone not too far from here that may have some calls available, so hopefully I'll be able to post about their arrival in the not to distant future.

First Egg of the Year

Last year, I was a chicken failure . I previously posted about my two hens in my post entitled Chicken Run . Chocolate (the runaway chicken) after a day or two of coming back to the coop decided she was a wild chicken. She hid in the cedar trees for about a month. I'd occasionally catch a glimpse of her when she'd come to clean up the grain from under the horse feeders, and then finally we saw her no more. I lost my other hen in the intense heat of July.

That left me with the one chick I hatched out in May -but as fate would have it, she became a he, so I had a Brahma rooster with no girls.

Sydney the Brahma Rooster

A friend of mine had some excess young ducks at the time and being the enabler she is, pawned a pair off on me. Welcome Harriet and Carter.

Harriet & Carter

I then purchased another hen from fellow North Texas blogger the "Modern Day Redneck" a pretty Brahma/Orpington cross. One day while I was working I heard a big ruckus, a looked out my office window, and around the corner of the yard came Harriet and Carter a squawking followed by the Rooster but no hen. I went outside to see what was going on, but there was nothing, except one thing was wrong -the hen was missing. I went back to where the birds free range every day, but there was no sign of the hen. She had vanished. I don't know if a stealthy coyote had sneaked up in the middle of the day and snatched her or if her attacker came from above. She was gone without a trace.

With no hens and winter coming I placed an ad on Craigslist for my rooster and happily someone wanted a breeding rooster, and so he was rehomed.

That left me with the two ducks Harriet and Carter. They were supposed to be a pair but I'm pretty sure I have two females. When they hit five months of age back in November, I was hoping they might start laying. I'd read threads over at Backyardchickens each day of peoples ducks laying their first eggs, but every day I checked my ducks, there were no eggs. My welfare chickens must have rubbed off on the ducks.

With the days now getting a little longer each day, I"ve been on a mission to get these ducks to lay. I've been encouraging them with alfalfa in their nesting box, feeding them freshly picked Dandelions, treats from the house, and adding laying pellets to their grain. Each day I look in the tractor and in their yard, no eggs, that is until today.

Hubby came in this evening and said give me your hand. I did as I was told and in it he put a nice creamy egg. Yippee, our first duck egg. I am so excited you'd think that I had the goose that laid the golden egg!

The "Golden" Egg (I guess I should have cleaned it better for it's moment of glory)