A duck tale of hope after power goes out
A homesteader thought she had her ducks in a row, but a power outage left 7 eggs teetering on the edge
When homesteader and artist Rose Leonard saw seven light blue eggs in her duck's coop, she jumped at the chance to expand her flock of Indian Runner ducks.
She borrowed an electric incubator and started the 28-day process of hatching the eggs at her southeastern New Brunswick farm.
She believed things were going well until the power went out after the ice storm.
Her first thought was, "the eggs!"
"We put the incubator right by the chimney, and the wood stove is down below in the basement, so we're hoping the heat would come up but the last couple of nights it's dropped down to [26 C] so we don't really know if we're going to have success."
Leonard said the eggs are supposed to sit at 37.5 C for 28 days, and this batch still has another 18 to go, making it difficult to keep them viable.
"We can't have the generator running all night long."
Pepper and Snowflake are the ducks responsible for the eggs. Leonard said they come from a hardy line of Sackville-area ducks, which she's hoping will increase the chance of their offspring's survival.
She said the ducks came from friends who had a pair of Indian Runners that ran into trouble.
"They were run over on the road," Leonard said.
Leonard is turning the eggs four times a day and keeping them warm and moist to increase the chances of ducklings hatching.
"It's been a bit of a challenge trying to get up all through the night and keep the wood stove going so that these guys don't get too cold, but we'll play it by ear and see what happens."
"I'm not sure how we can get the eggs up there on the bumpy road," Leonard said. "They'd be cracked by the time they got up there, so I think we'll just have to start over again."
But there is a silver lining.
Leonard thought her seven eggs were the last ones Snowflake would lay this winter, but after a visit to the duck's coop, she found another small blue egg.
"We'll name this one Hope."