Last year, despite my best efforts, I ended up with a couple of ducklings while picking up chicks to replenish our egg laying ladies. I was able to resist until I heard them quack. My heart melted.
I have two beautiful, messy, and very vain ducks with big personalities.
About a month ago, I noticed they were rather twitterpated. While cleaning their habitat, I noticed a broken egg sitting in a makeshift nest. After a failed attempt to incubate the first egg, I purchased an electric incubator through Amazon. Waddles duck has been laying a single egg each day since April 3rd and I now have an incubator full of growing babies.
28 days to incubate and hatch. In a little over a week, I'll have yellow, quacking puffballs beginning to emerge.
I have no idea what I'm doing, so imagine my surprise when I learned that I could 'candle' the eggs and see if they were viable and/or watch them grow. It's an ultrasound for ducklings! I'd like to say that I dated each egg to keep track of hatching times but I really did it so I could name them. 3, 4, 5, etc. It's fascinating to see how much they develop each day.
Here's a video of 3. Three was laid on April 3rd and put into the incubator within hours.