A duck tale of hope after power goes out

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."

• New Brunswick ice storm knocks out power to more than 100,000 customers

Leonard said the eggs are supposed to sit at 37.5 Cfor 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 ducksresponsible 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 isturning the eggs four times a day and keepingthem 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."

Duck Eggs

8 years ago

Duration 1:09

Rose Leonard describes trying to keep her duck eggs incubated after Tuesday's ice storm.Friends have offered to plug the incubator in at their homes, but Leonard isn't confident eggs will make it from her farm in Slacks Cove to Sackville, the nearest community with power, nearly 30 kilometres away.

"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."