Anis are bizarre, coal-black cuckoos with long floppy tails and unique,
curiously tall, flattened bills. Groove-billed occurs in a variety of
open and semi-open habitats in tropical lowlands and foothills,
typically staying low in shrubs and grasses. Gregarious and not
particularly graceful; usually seen crashing around awkwardly in small
groups.
Rob Garren posted a beautiful cockerel from his purple poultry project the other day, though i think this bird is from his general iridescent breeding pen. The bird is beautiful and looks like an oil slick. There isnt a “gene” that causes this, this is Rob selecting for more and more iridescence over time.
He also got some up close pictures of the feathers and they are breathtaking
You can follow Rob’s project at the purple poultry facebook group but none of these birds (or eggs) are for sale yet so do not bother him.
So there’s this company in the UK, right. They brand themselves on producing fancy free range eggs and as part of that they have breed information written on the carton.
I did some snooping and found that every miracle news story of a supermarket egg hatching in the UK traced back to duck eggs, specifically the Braddock White duck eggs produced by this one company for the supermarket Waitrose.
And one day my mum brings them home and says “I bought these to eat but aren’t they the ones that hatch?”
And it’s spring and I’m hatching a ton this year so in they went.
On candling we had three fertile eggs! That’s a fertility of 50% - the same as shipped eggs from a breeder!
Hatch day comes and we get 2 ducklings, Curie and Becquerel. Sadly, Curie contracts duck septicaemia from an infected navel and doesn’t make it, but Becquerel is a healthy bird and growing like a weed.
I had put 4 breeder eggs in a week after them in case just one hatched, so Becque now has two Khaki Campbell cross friends called Tsuki and Hoshi so she isn’t lonely.
And as of today’s 7am Quacking - Becque is a female! Which means she’s capable of laying eggs and therefore I have pirated a duck.
Ohohoho
So there’s this company in the UK, right. They brand themselves on producing fancy free range eggs and as part of that they have breed information written on the carton.
I did some snooping and found that every miracle news story of a supermarket egg hatching in the UK traced back to duck eggs, specifically the Braddock White duck eggs produced by this one company for the supermarket Waitrose.
And one day my mum brings them home and says “I bought these to eat but aren’t they the ones that hatch?”
And it’s spring and I’m hatching a ton this year so in they went.
On candling we had three fertile eggs! That’s a fertility of 50% - the same as shipped eggs from a breeder!
Hatch day comes and we get 2 ducklings, Curie and Becquerel. Sadly, Curie contracts duck septicaemia from an infected navel and doesn’t make it, but Becquerel is a healthy bird and growing like a weed.
I had put 4 breeder eggs in a week after them in case just one hatched, so Becque now has two Khaki Campbell cross friends called Tsuki and Hoshi so she isn’t lonely.
And as of today’s 7am Quacking - Becque is a female! Which means she’s capable of laying eggs and therefore I have pirated a duck.
feuer-bluete
