Hi there, me and hubby live out rural but are possibly moving to 7 acre property near Taupo, I want lots of laying and eating hens and also ducks, which is a heavy part of my heritage cuisine. I can get chicks from bromley hatcheries but can't seem to find any duckling hatcheries. There are ducks on trade me, most are adult bird and very pricey.
Anyone know where I can find some ducklings looking for about 30-40.
The commercial duck industry usually retains all the production itself, rather than sell ducklings. However you could always try.
I think the main place is Canterbury- try Canter Valley www.cantervalley.co.nz/
Sue
Labrador lover for yonks, breeder of pedigree Murray Grey cattle for almost as long, and passionate poultry person for more years than I care to count.
Which is infinitely more fun!
I have also been thinking about how you are going to kill those ducks. 30 to 40 in one hit seems like a big task, unless the family you mentioned is willing to do a working bee on a weekend - or perhaps a killing bee? :evil:
If not all ducks are the same age, you can stagger the killing to, say, once a month? Needs less freezer capacity, as well.
Hens for eggs are different from hens for eating! Same with ducks, we tried Khaki Campbells, good egg layers but they turned seasonal and wild ducks infiltrated them so we had heaps of eggs all at once. All of the ducks we tried were tough as!
5 acres, Ferguson 35X and implements, Hanmay pto shredder, BMW Z3, Countax ride on mower, chooks, Dorper and Wiltshire sheep. Bosky wood burning central heating stove and radiators. Retro caravan. Growing our own food and preserving it. Small vineyard, crap wine.
We have Appleyards -beautiful birds, nearly as large as pekins. Good eating, reasonable egg layers, pretty to look at, fairly relaxed birds. We run ours in the covered berry orchard, so wild ducks are not a problem.
For the best eating, you can't beat a Muscovy. Also, the drakes get very large - the largest of all eating ducks. On the downside, they take longer to grow up to eating size than the mallard-related breeds.
On the upside, if you keep three breeding muscovy females and one drake, you will easily breed 30-40 ducklings per year, as the females are incredibly good at sitting and hatching. So I would suggest you invest in a few breeding adults (making sure that the drake is not related to the females) as this will end up a lot cheaper than buying in ducklings every year. Muscovys will easily produce ducklings for 5 or more years. You will need to invest in a pen to put the mothers in for a few weeks after they have hatched their young, to prevent predators getting the ducklings when they are small, but otherwise they are very easy-care and productive ducks.
I've never seen that many ducklings for sale in one go, so you might have to buy a few groups to get the numbers you are after.
But if duck is something that you like to eat then I would recommend getting a small flock - we have silver appleyards (2 drakes & 5 ducks) and easily raise 40 ducklings a year with plenty of eggs to spare. The ducks are laying way more than our hens at the moment, but normally trail off laying a bit earlier in the season than the chooks do. We tend to recruit a couple of broody chickens alongside the ducks for raising the ducklings - the chooks tend to be more attentive mothers anyway!
Muddling our way through 1Ha on the Christchurch Port Hills, with flocks of heritage chickens, Silver Appleyard ducks, Gotland sheep, and Arapawa goats.
] Blueberry
