Hi Bloomer,
We bought some pekin type hatching eggs through Central Scotland Smallholders (they came from the same supplier as the hubbard eggs for the incubator).
They were all fertile, had a 90% hatch rate and in time turned into big white fluffy ducks
.
I am NEVER doing it again though. The mess and smell of thirty ducklings had to be experienced to be believed. They were also much harder to dress than chickens, for far less meat. In the end we just skinned and jointed most of them TBH.
If I had been able to raise them on concrete or mesh, and could hose everything down twice a day, maybe it would have been worth it. However, just keeping them in a shed and in a grass run really wasn't the way to do it.
BTW, how about turkeys instead?