And the winner is.....Crispy Duck!

These are my rare breed Welsh Harlequin ducklings. I hatched them in mid April and when they were just a few days old, we took them to Marley Hill Community Centre for people to see at the craft market we ran on Easter Monday. We had a free competition (mainly for kids though a few parental contributions were received) to come up with the best name for a duckling.

I'm pleased to announced that Ashleigh of Marley Hill was the winner (the prize was a chocolate Easter egg). The suggestion of "Crispy" as the name rather amused us!

We are hoping to have some chicks to take to the next craft market at Marley Hill on 25th May. We have the eggs in the incubator now and they are due to hatch a week tomorrow. However, our area had a major power cut on Friday. The electricity was down for nearly two and a half hours. I wrapped the eggs in a blanket with a bottle of hot water but I'm not sure they survived. We will persevere with them in the hope they survived but as a back up measure, we will put more eggs in another incubator - this is a much bigger one which a resident of Marley Hill has lent to us. These new eggs won't have hatched in time for the craft market but they will be ready for the May Fayre at Whickham's Chase Park which this year is in June!