Ducklings

I think it's easier hatching chicks rather than ducklings. We had set eggs under a broody Jersey giant and although she sat the full time not one egg hatched, on autopsy of the eggs, one had died in shell just a few days before due date, one had died a bit earlier than that and the others were addled, this of course could have been the cause of the two deaths. We should have candled the eggs each week, but the hen would not allow us to touch the eggs.
We do have ducklings hatching from the incubator but once again over a three day period, as the later ones are all from one end of the incubator on each hatch, we have concluded that it is not working correctly.
So far five have hatched but unfortunately one has died, why we don't know, it's the first time we have lost a new born but it's still sad, there is something so appealing about ducklings, more so than chicks.
We also two ducks sitting on eggs, they are sharing the nest, so hopefully they will manage to produce some young for us.

The garden is still giving us an abundance of veg, we are spoilt for choice, lots of Calabrese and beans. We have come to the end of the first flush of strawberries, we have been eating them since April, so now I will clean arround the plants, remove any dead leaves and then give the plants a good feed of seaweed, hopefully the will then produce again up until November as long as we get no frosts.

I have a mystery with Sweet peas, although I planted a mixture of colours into modules and had no way of knowing which was which colour when I planted them out, all the flowers in the containers have turned out deep purple and the ones in the flower beds are all pink, no sign of the white ones. A similar thing has happened to a friend of ours, but this time with Lobelia, she had put a pinch of mixed colours into modules, they are now in bloom, purple with purple white with white and pink with pink, very strange considering how small the seeds are.

New chicks

To me, one of the wonders of nature is eggs hatching. That an egg can develop into a chick, and that chick can break it's way out of a shell, on time just seems to me, well magic.
Our last hatching was very successful with six out of the seven eggs hatching, one Light Sussex and five Buff Orpington, the seventh egg was infertile.
The hatch before that was far less successful, six Buff eggs, bought from Ebay from apparently champion stock brought forth just two chicks, two of the eggs were infertile and two had died early on in the shell. Altogether we had set ten eggs, four from another chicken fancier in Ireland, all her eggs hatched, as have all of our own eggs. I guess transporting eggs from the UK by air does the eggs no good. Anyway, I now have seven Buff chicks and a trio, all unrelated , hopefully we will have some good birds.
I am hoping to also increase our Light Sussex stock, however, the cockerel prefers the Jersey Giant hens and keeps flying over the fencing into their run, it's not that his wife's don't like him, they are quite happy to be mated by him, but for some reason he wants to be in the other run, this despite the J.G cock giving him a hard time.