Shell-less egg problem in mallard

duckman4450

Chirping
7 Years
Aug 1, 2012
175
2
81
Sorry that I have already created a post on this put I believe this could be a serious problem with my duck.

My mallard will be 2 years old in less than 3 weeks and she has had a problem of laying shell-less eggs for over 4 months straight with no normal eggs since march of 2015. She normally lays one egg a day with the exception of a few off days here and there.

When she was laying good eggs every day, she would have a shell-less egg probably once a month which was not a problem. When she ran out of layer feed, I got her some feather fixer food because she had some terrible feathers. After a couple weeks of the new food she started laying shell-less eggs every day. After a while I realized how bad it was so I went to the store and got her layer feed again. She has been on it for probably 2 months+ and hasn't gone back to her normal egg laying. As mentioned before she has not laid a normal egg for over 4 months which is extremely concerning.

She is fed oyster shells which she eats a lot of. She does not eat spinach. I have tried giving her calcium water and putting calcium powder in her water, as well as a specially formulated calcium-rich food but nothing has helped.

She struggles so much getting the eggs out and starts having contractions and spasms and gets very anxious. She then comes over to me so I can help her get it out, where she pushes up against my hands really hard trying to get it out. The other night she even was quacking loud because of the pain of it. After she lays the egg, she almost immediately goes to sleep and a thick white substance drips from her vent. I'm so concerned because I have heard of egg binding and death of ducks and chickens because of shell-less or soft-shelled eggs and also know the white fluid is not good.

Today I started her on .6 ml of Safe-guard dewormer daily for 5 days, though she does not have any other symptoms other than bad eggs. She is not stressed and is a very spoiled and happy duck and displays no other problems than the eggs.

Please give advice if you have any - I would be absolutely devastated if something happened to her as she is so sweet and a huge part of my family. I will include a picture of the eggs she lays. Thanks so much.






P.S. I think she knows I'm posting on BYC about her...

 
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You might consider keeping her in a dark shelter for a while - perhaps with some decoy eggs. When Sechs had a prolapse with a soft egg, I was able to get her to a vet right away and get the egg out, and a few stitches in her vent.

But the advice was to keep her in the dark for a while (not pitch black, but dark). So I did - and there were a few eggs in the shelter, that I had not picked up due to the crisis. Anyway, she made a nest and rolled the eggs into it and started sitting on the eggs. She sat for a couple of months. But that meant that she stopped laying, and let her body rest. That was over a year ago, and since then she has laid normal eggs. A few times she layed soft ones again, so I started giving her extra calcium, which helped. She has now gone broody again, and I am happy she is getting the rest.
 
You might consider keeping her in a dark shelter for a while - perhaps with some decoy eggs.  When Sechs had a prolapse with a soft egg, I was able to get her to a vet right away and get the egg out, and a few stitches in her vent.

But the advice was to keep her in the dark for a while (not pitch black, but dark).  So I did - and there were a few eggs in the shelter, that I had not picked up due to the crisis.  Anyway, she made a nest and rolled the eggs into it and started sitting on the eggs.  She sat for a couple of months.  But that meant that she stopped laying, and let her body rest.   That was over a year ago, and since then she has laid normal eggs.  A few times she layed soft ones again, so I started giving her extra calcium, which helped.  She has now gone broody again, and I am happy she is getting the rest.


Hi Amiga. When you say leave her in a dark shelter, are you talking about a day or days or what? I feel like she will go crazy if she doesn't see me for a day!
 
Not solitary confinement , no. Could you remind me what her setup is? Shelter, routine?


She's a house duck so her schedule is probably different from most ducks.

She wakes up around 630 am usually, goes outside into her pen, which is fully open on all sides, at around 7:30-8. Around 11am I let her free range in the yard, a lot of the times I'm out with her. Around 1-2 pm she comes in for a nap. She goes back out to free range till 4, goes into her pen for an hour or 2, then free ranges till dark, around 8-830. She then comes inside and eats then she takes a bath around 9:00-10ish. After her bath she sits on my bed and preens then falls asleep. I take her into the basement for bed usually 11pm-midnight. Her bed setup is 2 large dog crates pushed together covered on all sides. She gets a light on for about 30-45 minutes then it's pitch black until she wakes up in the morning.

Note that these times are not perfect and some things change depending on the day, but those are my best guesses on a typical day.
 
How you do this is of course your call. I don't know how much reduction of light will be helpful, if it is to make a difference. With Sechs, I was told to keep her in, in a darkened room, for several days so that she would stop making eggs. In her case, since she had three stitches around her vent, trying to lay an egg would have been a crisis - so I kept her indoors for a few days and by then she had gone broody. I did however, allow her outdoors for short spells to be with the others, and run around.
 

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