White Campbell...232 eggs in 235 days...and still going!

For anyone who is looking for an egg laying duck breed I thought I'd share some info on my egg laying machine...

Breed: White Cambell
Age: 8 months
Age we got her: 3 weeks
Location: North England (cold)
Conditions: Freeranges in 230 square meters of back garden
Home: Chicken coup outside with 3 chickens, plus she's house trained and comes inside on an evening to watch TV with us.
Food: Handfull of decent dried dog food and water in the morning and evening, plus whatever critters, grass and my plants she eats during the day
Treats: Dry and live mealworms and tomatos
Egg Size: large, avg 80g
Training: She knows about 10 commands rangining from "In your basket" to "Play Time", learns new command very easily.
Friendlyness: She's very friendly and constantly walks over and demands to be stroked or chased. She does startle easily...she hates sweeping brushes, she thinks they're going to kill her. No idea where this scared reaction has come from.
Water source: Pond. She ignores the fish and is not a massive fan of swimming. She normally goes belly deep so she can still walk on the bottom. I did have pond plants until we got a duck...she's a greedy duck.

She started laying at the start of September and has only missed 3 days where she hasn't laid, 172 eggs in 175 days. UPDATED 28th April 2010: 232 eggs in 235 days!
The month of -5 to -10 and below and loads of snow didn't affect her laying....in fact she loved the snow and nibbled my feet until i pushed her through the deep snow like she was a sledge.
It's now spring, when ducks lay normally. Can I expect this kind of egg laying all year since she kept it up during the harshest of conditions?

So many web posts on the web say campbells get roughly 200 / yr. At this rate my little duck is going to produce 350+. Has anyone elses campbell laid this many?

On the 3 occasions she has missed a day laying the egg she lays the following day is a MONSTER!

Woka

Wow you DO have an egg laying machine, don't you! LOL

If she didn't slow down I expect her to keep going. I have (or have had) khakis, a runner and welsh harlequins. 300+ eggs/year is normal for them. The duck I had that layed in to 200 range was a buff, but that is normal for that breed. This winter my girls decided to take December and January off but they are back on track now

She always lays before 7am.
We've never caught her laying yet, but every mornign there's an egg waiting for us where she slept.
I did let her out at 6.45am the other day and at 7am when I went outside with the dog food there was an egg under the garden table and chairs. Silly duck.

I am getting a 1 week old female runner duck next Monday, so it should have hatched today.
That should at least give my egg machine a friend.

The Bantam Cochin, RIR and a Cuckoo Marans all stopped laying 2 days after it first snowed at the end of Dec. The Marans started laying last week and has now done 7 dark chocolate eggs in 8 days. The RIR is the worst of my layers...even worse than the Bantam Cochin...I thought RIR were supposed to be great layers.
When my cochin was laying she was doing 2 days laying, 1 day off, 2 days laying, 1 day off...5 eggs / wk constantly for months, the RIR was avg 3-4 / wk.

Woka

You will love the runner eggs. They are even bigger than khaki eggs.

I am assuming Khakis lay the same sized eggs as White Campbells?
Boggling lays pure white eggs.
Do runners lay bluey greeny eggs?

Woka

I would love to see a picture of your white campbell. Where did you get her?


Our Khaki Campbells stopped laying in December and haven' t started back up yet.
We have a flock of 5 and they very much stay together and are a bit high strung.
I wonder if the extra light from being in your house at night has helped her keep laying?
We decided that we didn't want to run electric out to the coop, so didn't give them any extra light this winter.

If I let them out early and they go running out to their yard, I have seen an egg fall out of one of the girls as she was waddling along.

Thanks for sharing about your white campbell.

YardFarmer Julie

She sounds exceptionally sweet, in fact I think you may get the prize for the snuggliest, most productive, broad billed egg laying machine in the Northern Hemisphere! Did you hand raise her as an only child - er - duckling?

Dave Holderread, our best known duck expert on this side of the pond says campbells should be expected to lay between 250 - 340 eggs per year. That's campbells in general, not just the khakis. The best duck layers top the best chickens.
She will probably take some time off for a molt eventually. I would think YardFarmers is right about the extra light helping her lay.

It's interesting that she has been able to transition between inside your house and the deep cold outside. That situation has cause concern for some people. Maybe we were making too much of it?

Haha. She certainly is snuggley.

She was raised from 0 to 3 weeks old in an indoor pen with 20 other ducklings and 30 chicks. This was at an urban farm 1 mile from the city center.

We bought her when she was 3 weeks old and she was hand raised indoors with a small bantam cochin of the same age as her friend.
She is molting now, and has been for 2 weeks. She sheds feathers faster than I can clean them up...and even if you think it's clean she flaps her wings and turns the living room into something that resembles one of those glass balls with liquid and snow in them that you shake.

She does get a fair few mealworm treats and I know low protein can halt laying, so meal worms combined with good dog food gives her enough goodness including calcium.

She's never had an issue with going outside.
Since the age of about 8 weeks they lived outdoors all day and came in at night for protection.
2 days after putting them outside full time the cold spell that covered the globe hit...never really bothered her at all. Chickens HATE snow and sulked for 1 month and refused to lay!

Ill take a more recent foto tonight.

Woka