Why ducks stop laying eggs
"Are those Ancona ducks? We have four and I love them. Such clowns and I
enjoy helping a rare breed. Can you tell me when yours stopped laying
for the year? I can't figure out why my eggs stopped in August!!"
Those are indeed Ancona ducks, Meg! You can read all about our duck adventures here and here.
Chickens that are more than a year old stop laying in the fall when they molt,
and ducks molt too (although, the internet reports, on a bit more of a
sporadic schedule). That said, when our ducks "stopped laying" we soon
discovered that they'd decided to hide their eggs in the woods instead
of laying in the coop. Even though it was a hassle, locking the ducks in
at night broke them of the woods-laying habit. Since waterfowl tend to
lay quite early in the morning, all of the eggs had been deposited in
the coop by the time I let them out at 9 am.
I hope that helps turn up your missing eggs!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Duck eggs
Hi can you please help ? We have recently bought 10 ducks 4 are only very young bought as chicks. We are getting between 2 to 3 eggs a day at present. But they keep stopping laying for few days. They have large water bath, fed well,cleaned often just cannot understand it. We also have 3 young chickens in with them. They are locked in every night and let into a large run around 7 am daily. 1 of them seems to be a bully it pulls feathers from others. We thought this was male but think it's now laying. There are lots of small grey soft feathers in there beds, but we live in Cyprus so it's very hot here and they are young. I have orders for eggs from friends and now for 3 days no eggs yet again. We give them food specifically for eggs plus supplement. PLEASE HELP IM GOING QUACKERS .
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Shirley
— Thu Jul 28 02:57:43 2016
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