# Do ducks normally lay eggs this time of year?



## Chanceosunshine (Nov 29, 2021)

I have two accidental ducks...meaning I didn't set out to have ducks. They each came at a different time and they're different breeds. The male duck has been here longer and had convinced himself that he's a chicken. I brought the female home and he wanted nothing to do with her. He finally likes her after a couple of months. She was dumped at my son's house, so we brought her home to be with our male.
Anyway, she's laying eggs and it shocks me. Maybe it shouldn't?? My chickens lay a couple eggs a week now, but she is consistently laying eggs now. I used them for baking and they were great. I've been told that she's probably a Cayuga. So, is it normal for them to be laying now?


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## GoofyGoat (Sep 21, 2018)

Mine are, normal or not I’m not sure, but they’re doing it.


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## happybleats (Sep 12, 2010)

My ducks are laying like crazy. Our Texas weather may have them confused but I'm not complaining...I love duck eggs. Chickens are laying pretty well too. I just took a flat of eggs to both my kids in town. They love the taste of home!!


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## DDFN (Jul 31, 2011)

Actually had thought about getting Cayuga, but when I had ducks last it was pekin, golden 300s and Indian runners. Between the 3 breed I always had eggs. Not sure if that was supposed to be normal but when I had them never had to buy store eggs at all.


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## Chanceosunshine (Nov 29, 2021)

happybleats said:


> My ducks are laying like crazy. Our Texas weather may have them confused but I'm not complaining...I love duck eggs. Chickens are laying pretty well too. I just took a flat of eggs to both my kids in town. They love the taste of home!!
> View attachment 217389


What kind of ducks do you have? Those are super cool containers. Where did you get them?

I'm super impressed with the duck eggs. I definitely want to get more ducks now.


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## Chanceosunshine (Nov 29, 2021)

DDFN said:


> Actually had thought about getting Cayuga, but when I had ducks last it was pekin, golden 300s and Indian runners. Between the 3 breed I always had eggs. Not sure if that was supposed to be normal but when I had them never had to buy store eggs at all.


Did you have a favorite of those breeds? I like Bev's eggs cause they're not huge and they taste better than the last duck eggs I've tasted.


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## happybleats (Sep 12, 2010)

My ducks are Mallards l. Tractor Supoly purchase. I prefer Khaki Campbell ducks but these were a whim purchase when they were $1 each. 

Egg cartons are from the Dollar Tree 😁 I love them


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## Emrcornerranch (Jun 13, 2020)

I have three duck groups at the moment. 😁 The 2 year old ducks have slowed down laying eggs for the winter. The second group is doing very well. The third group is still too young.

The 3 Saxony ducks and khaki Campbell are my dream ducks. I love them love them love them. They are living teddy bears. I absolutely recommend Saxony ducks if you want to try them out. I am very passionate about them. My love burns strong. 😂 They are very gentle and easily befriended in my experience. They have been good layers and are big bodied. I don’t know how predator savvy they are because they are a little too easy going and big. My khaki might have kept them alive. She’s the glue that holds the group together.

I have 4 Cayugas, 3 Welsh Harlequins, and 3 anconas living with an angry big rooster (wonderful with ducks but hates everything else). 3 cayugas have become increasingly white and only one is still a beautiful green teal. They also only laid black eggs at first. They also laid black dotted eggs. For the most part, they just lay white eggs. I’ve been disappointed with large hatchery cayugas. The harlequins are very pretty but hard to tell apart. I love to watch them in the snow. The anconas are very cute. I don’t think any of my anconas have gone broody yet.

I recently added a male Welsh Harequin duckling, 4 Blue Swedish ducklings, and one Indian Runner duckling. They are too young to lay yet. The runner is my favorite. She’s actually the calmest and silliest of them. The Swedish ducklings are becoming very beautiful, though. I will be adding the harlequin male to the 2 year old harlequin girls when he is larger.

Guess who gets digestive upset from eggs? ME. Lol. I still love my ducks and wish people were more open minded about eating duck eggs. I haven’t had much luck with anyone wanting duck eggs.


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## DDFN (Jul 31, 2011)

Chanceosunshine said:


> Did you have a favorite of those breeds? I like Bev's eggs cause they're not huge and they taste better than the last duck eggs I've tasted.


Well I ended up liking the pekin eggs better for myself due to the fact (I am weird) they have more egg whites than the others due to the larger size. I can not do egg yolks in fried or boiled eggs and can only do egg yolks when mixed in things to dilute it. The yolks give me migraines, even since I stopped egg yolks I haven't (knocks on wood) had a migraine since.


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## Tanya (Mar 31, 2020)

Ducks are like chickens. If they are not fertilized they will lay. If the breed requires daily laying it will happen. I have Russian ornamentals. They are wild. My white female has hatched and is raising 3 here. The others randomly lay all over the place.


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## Chanceosunshine (Nov 29, 2021)

happybleats said:


> My ducks are Mallards l. Tractor Supoly purchase. I prefer Khaki Campbell ducks but these were a whim purchase when they were $1 each.
> 
> Egg cartons are from the Dollar Tree 😁 I love them


The male we have is supposed to be Khaki Campbell. We had two males, Tom and Huck, that needed a home. They loved the pond and waterway into our woods so much so that they stopped coming home. Then one day they disappeared. I took a walk and seen them far off on a little pond. Then one day, Tom appeared and he was alone. I put him in with the chickens. He's been a chicken for over a year now.

The Dollar Tree! My daughter-in-law took me to one of those. I couldn't believe everything was a dollar. I kept asking her if things were a dollar and she was like, "Yep, everything." I've got to go look for those! I thought for sure you were going to say you got them on Amazon for ten bucks a pop!



Emrcornerranch said:


> I have three duck groups at the moment. 😁 The 2 year old ducks have slowed down laying eggs for the winter. The second group is doing very well. The third group is still too young.
> 
> The 3 Saxony ducks and khaki Campbell are my dream ducks. I love them love them love them. They are living teddy bears. I absolutely recommend Saxony ducks if you want to try them out. I am very passionate about them. My love burns strong. 😂 They are very gentle and easily befriended in my experience. They have been good layers and are big bodied. I don’t know how predator savvy they are because they are a little too easy going and big. My khaki might have kept them alive. She’s the glue that holds the group together.
> 
> ...


I'll look into the Saxony ducks. I tried to get some Welsh Harlequins, I was on a waiting list, but it didn't work out with the breeder. My son wants to raise Muscovy ducks for meat.

Cute Muscovy trivia...there was a Muscovy duck adopted by a troop of soldiers in WWII. They found him and planned on eating him but he convinced them otherwise and he became like their mascot. They called him Captian Haggis. My son is a history buff and I was able to get him a book about Captain Haggis for Christmas.

My Cayuga eggs are white too and they are like a jumbo chicken egg size. I had a hard time deciding whether or not they were duck eggs or if the meat hen was laying because they were similar to her eggs. After using them I know they are clearly duck eggs.

Sounds like you have an interesting duck menagerie!




DDFN said:


> Well I ended up liking the pekin eggs better for myself due to the fact (I am weird) they have more egg whites than the others due to the larger size. I can not do egg yolks in fried or boiled eggs and can only do egg yolks when mixed in things to dilute it. The yolks give me migraines, even since I stopped egg yolks I haven't (knocks on wood) had a migraine since.


What a strange thing to cause a migraine. Funny how our bodies work! My son gets migraines if he eats shrimp. I'd rather give up egg yokes!

My Cayuga eggs have a rather large yoke. You may want to avoid that breed.


Tanya said:


> Ducks are like chickens. If they are not fertilized they will lay. If the breed requires daily laying it will happen. I have Russian ornamentals. They are wild. My white female has hatched and is raising 3 here. The others randomly lay all over the place.


I'll have to look those up. It amazing me how many duck breeds there are!


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## Emrcornerranch (Jun 13, 2020)

Chanceosunshine said:


> The male we have is supposed to be Khaki Campbell. We had two males, Tom and Huck, that needed a home. They loved the pond and waterway into our woods so much so that they stopped coming home. Then one day they disappeared. I took a walk and seen them far off on a little pond. Then one day, Tom appeared and he was alone. I put him in with the chickens. He's been a chicken for over a year now.
> 
> The Dollar Tree! My daughter-in-law took me to one of those. I couldn't believe everything was a dollar. I kept asking her if things were a dollar and she was like, "Yep, everything." I've got to go look for those! I thought for sure you were going to say you got them on Amazon for ten bucks a pop!
> 
> ...


Oh, I’ll add a Muscovy or three (four) one of these days too I’m sure!😀 My Saxony ducks were from Cackle hatchery, but they shipped from a separated distributor in California. One was dead on arrival. The male turned out to be a female, so I drove an hour and a half to get a male from a small farm. Turns out the parents of the male duck are from top notch stock. 🙂 I guess that’ll work well for hatching and selling them later or just maintaining the good qualities of the birds. He was 4 months old and near feral with little human interaction when I picked him up. Within a week and a half I was able to pet him. 😍 I don’t know if it’s because the girls are so calm that he learned to trust me…None of my other duck breeds would come around that fast.

I enjoy seeing different types of ducks walking around. I find them so charming. It’s also nice how resistant they are to health issues compared to chickens. My ducks are even better layers than my chickens. I hear a lot of bad things about ducks from people who used to own them. I guess they are not for everyone? I think a lot of people keep them in very small living spaces and don’t like how muddy and stinky it gets, but I believe that’s a mismanagement issue. They should be complaining about how dirty they make water! THAT I understand.


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## Tanya (Mar 31, 2020)

This is what one of our wild males look like, and there is a black one and a white one (Albino) The females are very plain. They are called mandarin's. I call them my painted ducks.


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## happybleats (Sep 12, 2010)

Chanceosunshine said:


> The Dollar Tree! My daughter-in-law took me to one of those. I couldn't believe everything was a dollar. I kept asking her if things were a dollar and she was like, "Yep, everything." I've got to go look for those! I thought for sure you were going to say you got them on Amazon for ten bucks a pop!


Yup. Prices went up this month to $1.25 but still xan find good deals. I grab egg cartons every time I go in. Not all stores carry them but you can order off their web sight but have to order a case of them.


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## Chanceosunshine (Nov 29, 2021)

Tanya said:


> View attachment 217419
> 
> 
> This is what one of our wild males look like, and there is a black one and a white one (Albino) The females are very plain. They are called mandarin's. I call them my painted ducks.


That's beautiful!


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## ksalvagno (Oct 6, 2009)

I talked to a local duck owner who brings duck eggs into the store I work at. He said as long as you feed them plenty of feed, they lay eggs. Definitely not like chickens.


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## Chanceosunshine (Nov 29, 2021)

ksalvagno said:


> I talked to a local duck owner who brings duck eggs into the store I work at. He said as long as you feed them plenty of feed, they lay eggs. Definitely not like chickens.


That's a huge bonus! I have a breed of chicken picked out to buy specifically because they are known to lay better during the winter. Maybe I need to just go ducks instead.
I wonder which eat more parasites?


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## Chanceosunshine (Nov 29, 2021)

One more duck question. I remember reading a long time ago that ducks lay on the ground all over the place, which is what turned me off of the thoughts of raising them. But, this little duck lays in a bin I put in the coop. Is that common or do they usually just plop them out anywhere?


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## Emrcornerranch (Jun 13, 2020)

Chanceosunshine said:


> One more duck question. I remember reading a long time ago that ducks lay on the ground all over the place, which is what turned me off of the thoughts of raising them. But, this little duck lays in a bin I put in the coop. Is that common or do they usually just plop them out anywhere?


When my ducks free ranged, they laid anywhere. Even in the water. Eggs would float around…I started confining the ducks in their coop until 10am, and that really helped them lay in a nesting box. My non-free rangers also immediately laid in their nesting box. I believe if they are confined to a smaller area, they will lay in a nesting box. I use the top of a plastic barrel with a rectangle cut for them to walk through to get inside. As long as there’s some hay/straw/bedding material with an egg, they seem to want to lay there.

I do not free range anymore after the foxes found us.


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