Morning Dose of Cute

Starting note: I know I’ve been negligent at updating this site lately, but hoping to get back into it. Lot’s of stuff going on at the homestead.

We are finally expanding our menagerie of animals here beyond chickens. We actually planned to get ducks last year and then never got to it. I had a duck coop already built a year or so ago.

Last Saturday we picked up six day old Ancona ducklings from a local breeder. Ancona ducks are considered Critical on The Livestock Conservancy breed list and we are fortunate to have some breeders here in Vermont trying to grow the breed numbers. I’m still not sure how many we’ll end up raising, although the idea of breeding a critical breed is intriguing to me. For now we will end up keeping one drake and all the females from this group of 6. The other drakes will end up being delicious dinner at some point. Seems counter intuitive, but part of building a breed is finding more people to raise them for typical use (eggs, meat, pest control, etc.).

Here they are at almost a week old. Growing insanely fast already.