From our single pair of ducks this year, we began hatching eggs on March 9. My method of hatching is simple. I pick up an egg from the duck hen nearly every day. Once I have collected 3 eggs, I put them in the incubator. Our incubator is nothing fancy, it's about 20 years old and one of those simple styrofoam things. I hand turn each egg 4-8 times a day. Once the eggs hatch, I move the duckling to a large Rubbermaid tub brooder with a 100 watt light bulb for heat...
Once the babies grow a bit, are getting around well, and I'm sure they aren't going to get chilled, they get moved to another large Rubbermaid tub. They get a water container large enough to climb into, but we remove the heat lamp. At this stage it is safe to move the brooder tubs outside.
The next promotion is to a moveable wire pen where they are introduced to grass and weeds, and a larger water container. They eat a lot at this age and by moving the pen every day they get a variety of bugs and plants in addition to their feed...
You can see that they are just beginning to get their feathers....
Once they outgrow this pen, they are moved to the hoophouse. It's in higher grass and weeds to accomodate their fast growth.
These are mostly feathered now, and soon will be moved to a finishing pen.
By the way, the ducks in the hoophouse were all hatched in March. They should be in the freezer by mid-May.
We use a similar graduation process with the quail. Once hatched we move them to a 10 gal sized fish tank...
From there they move to a Rubbermaid tub brooder with a heat lamp..
Once they have feathered out, we move them to a larger tub. This is also when they get a wing clipped. The quail pictured below have all hatched this month. Quail will fly straight up and break their necks on the cage or brooder top.
These are old enough now to go without additional heat. They will be fully mature within a month.
All of the birds pictured are what we've hatched since March 9. This is how much meat you can produce in a very short time on a small homestead. We also have a number of chickens nearly ready to butcher, plus a few extra roosters that will be in the freezer soon.
No grocery store meat for us this year!
5 comments:
And may i just testify that Susan The Great can produce better meat than you will find in any grocery store? The little piggie sent to camp last week was so good that it caused my entire family to backslide...we don't eat pork as a general rule, but this guy was so tasty we just couldn't help ourselves!!
Congratulations! We are doing the same with turkeys and chickens. How do you like the taste of the duck? Have not talked the family into those yet and really would love a pond on the new homestead and the two would go together like well you know...ha!
JJ~
So far my favorite is smoked duck. We just processed 5 of them over the weekend and I'll be smoking them with the ham this week.
Awesome job! How much do the quail weigh dressed out?
They are supposed to be about 11 oz dressed. Not a bad size, should be 1 bird per portion.
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