My ducks have started laying!

[Thomzo]

Oh dear, I can see your problem. What a shame.

Zoe

[Mare Owner]

Why not let them hatch some out? Ducks is delicious.

No thank you.

Sorry, didn't mean to offend. I am still new here, so don't know everyone's likes and dislikes.

Can you get some fake eggs, like carved wooden eggs, to leave a few in their nest, maybe one or two will quit laying? (leaving one laying for the eggs you can use).

Do you have any other animals to feed the eggs to?

We have a few laying hens here and have more eggs than we can use, but family takes the extra. We eat more eggs when there are a lot and over winter we go eggless for a few weeks. And we have some hens we let hatch out chicks. So far I have not had the stomach to butcher them, we give them away when they get big enough, but it is fun having the little ones around and watching them grow.

When we had muscovy ducks we didn't collect any eggs, just let them hatch out and gave the ducklings away ('course we had plenty of chicken eggs to eat).

[Millymollymandy]

I was a bit short I admit, and I'm sorry, but I thought that the wink emoticon meant that you were joking, and eating my cute pet ducks or their offspring isn't very funny to me!

In actual fact I don't like the taste of duck - unless it is crispy chinese style!

Anyway, I thought you'd need a broody duck to hatch out eggs just like with hens? Mine just lay in a nest in the shed then leg it off to the pond when I let them out in the morning.

There's no-one to give ducklings to other than for the pot and as I have no spare space to raise any indoors I would rather remove the eggs.

Originally I imagined they would lay outside somewhere, raise cute ducklings which would then fly off somewhere else so we wouldn't be overrun with ducks, but then originally I didn't think they'd be so tame, come running or swimming every time they see me, and keep coming back to the shed every night..... or that they'd be too heavy to fly being farmyard white ducks........or that I'd fall in love with them..... I was very naive but you get the picture?

[red]

ducks are sposed to make poor mothers...

hens are better


M3 - do you still have too many eggs in winter as well as summer? thats the reason to freeze them - as often the hens quit during the dark months.

they are gunky mess when defrosted.. therefore useless for fried eggs etc - but ok in cakes and flans etc

[Millymollymandy]

Gunky as in looking really curdled and off?

I got fewer eggs last winter cos my hens were 2 years old and one of them moulted but now that I've got 2 new layers plus the ducks I expect to get plenty this winter.

[Rainy]

I need to stop reading this thread as it makes me sad. The flamin fox finished mine off recently leaving just one duck. I rehomed her with someone else who keeps ducks so she has company.

My ducks have always free ranged during the day but the fox is coming in broad daylight - do any of you pen your ducks and if you do, how do they respond to it?

[red]

thats the problem.. foxes do come in the daytime (as well as at night) - they always have

[Millymollymandy]

My land is fenced with a 2 metre high wire mesh fence with concrete posts and the bottom of the wire mesh is embedded in concrete so nothing can get in except neighbourhood cats who jump through the gate or over the wall beside the gate.

The only time we found a fox in here was a dead one - but it was the summer that the pond level was really low and it would have been able to get under the fence wire where the stream normally is. I expect it came in to die anyway as it was found on a tiny spit of land that is really inaccessible as it's bounded by stream, pond and exterior fence, so the only reason I discovered it was because I was walking where once the pond had been!