Duck Breed Focus - Silver Appleyard

[Chaneys Ranch]

What made you decide to get this breed?
After combing the net for a couple months on the different breeds of ducks, I settled on the SA because it was:
1. Known for good egg production
2. Large Heavyweight duck with good flavored meat
3. Calm temperament
4. Was able to go in on a ducklings group buy from Holderread Farms with other several other individuals
5. Able to visit a nearby farm that had these ducks and get good feedback on the breed

Do you own them for fun? Breeding? Some other purpose?
I own them primarily for their eggs. I own four hens and now wish I had six.

What are your favorite characteristics about this breed?
Produce large eggs on a consistent basis. For my four hens, I typically get 3 eggs per day. Flavor is mild and creamy. Great to eat and bake with.

Post some pics of your birds; male/female, chicks, eggs, etc!
Will update this post with pics

Some additional observations:
1. Egg production for 4 hens = about 3 eggs per day
2. Ducks started egg laying @ 25 weeks maturity
3. Ducks are friendly and only seem to quack excessively when they are greeting humans
4. Four ducks eat roughly 80lbs of poultry feed/month (Southern States brand)
5. Ducks lay eggs within the coop rather than in the yard

In case anyone is interested, a video showing my coop and yard design can be seen below:

Updates to the design above...
Added poultry light to provide 15 hours/day of light so that egg production wouldn't decrease. Purchased light from here: http://www.onceinnovations.com/agri...ayer-poultry-light-with-dim-to-red-technology
Added three 2' x 2' nesting boxes so that ducks could lay outside of coop if they desire. They rarely use it.

Some additional observations regarding the yard design:
1. Ducks are doing well with using 5 gallon buckets for water/dunking their heads. They also tend to make a huge mess of it. I usually note half the water gone each night with a lot of sand in the bucket. Presumably they are jumping in and out of the bucket. Bucket contents must be emptied, cleaned out and re-filled each day. I have placed a garden hose/nozzle right next to the door to make this process easy. This will be more problematic in the winter due to freeze issues.
2. Watering cups have not worked out as well as I had planned. The ducks tend to clog it up easily when using it because of all the sand in the yard. After three months, all the cups are no longer working.
3. Sand is working well. Only issue is that ducks tend to spill a lot of water out near the buckets and also defecate primarily in that area. After two weeks, the sand in that area can no longer filter water/waste. After a month the top layer of the sand near the buckets has too much waste in it and must be removed and replenished (I add it to my garden as fertilizer). I also intend to purchase a tiller so that I can un-pack the sand that has occurred over time in the yard. I used construction sand so it should easily become unpacked once I re-till it.
4. Feeding bin is working well. Ducks tend to waste some of the feed when eating as there is some spillage around the bucket but it is not too bad. Also, some of the feed near the entrance of the feeding tubes gets wet during bad rainstorms and rain soaked feed needs to be removed.


Some additional observations regarding the coop design:
1. Ducks have taken to the coop quickly and will enter it on their own at twilight each night. They have no issues with going up or down the ramp. Coop is manually shut each night and re-opened each morning.
2. Ducks like to lay in the coop (near the door) which makes it easy to find and collect eggs each day.
3. Coop is very easy to clean out and refill. Soiled hay is added to my garden as fertilizer cover.
4. Coop needs to be cleaned out and restocked with fresh hay every 3-4 weeks. The ventilation holes do let some of the rain into the coop. If the rain is particularly bad, the hay may get overly wet and need replacement. I have gone back and increased the PVC roof overhang which should reduce the amount of water to gets into the coop during bad rain storms.
5. Added poultry light that turns on @ 5am - 8am and 5pm - 8pm giving the ducks 15 hours of light per day.
6. Ducks seem very comfortable in the coop and become immediately quiet when entering. Coop should stay comfortable in the winter since it was insulated under the floorboard and above the ceiling.

With your permission I would love to share this on our states thread. Many folks only reason for not keeping ducks is "the mess" and you really have that covered here!

 

[smithmal]

Sure. No problem.

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

Sure. No problem.

Thank you and by the way, welcome to BYC!

 

[tjalred]

I stumbled across the Silver Appleyard breed and am thinking this is the breed we want on our little farmstead. What is the laying lifespan typically?

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

I stumbled across the Silver Appleyard breed and am thinking this is the breed we want on our little farmstead. What is the laying lifespan typically?

I only have a drake. Hopefully some one can share info, they seem to lay very well from what I read.

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

I stumbled across the Silver Appleyard breed and am thinking this is the breed we want on our little farmstead. What is the laying lifespan typically?

And welcome to BYC

 

[smithmal]

From what I've read, the laying capacity is 3-5 years. SAs have been stellar layers for me. On paper, total expected eggs/year for SAs range anywhere from 200 - 270 eggs. So, if you do the calculations, you have anywhere from a 60% - 80% chance they will lay each day (which is basically what I'm seeing). Below are some quick calculations to correlate number of SA ducks to dozens of eggs per month (please let me know if I am in error).



Unlike other breeds, they do not rest during the winter months (see Muscovies) and as long as you keep their exposed light per day @ 15 hours of light or more you should not see a slow down in laying frequency during the winter months (I can attest to this personally).

SAs are very pretty (especially the drakes) and have good temperament, plus since they are so big, they are not flighty. I've recently mixed in some White Layer (WL) ducks in with my SAs (see below for the explanation) and the WL ducks are far more flighty than the SA ducks.

If there's one knock about SAs I would think it would be the feed to egg ratio. B/c they are such big ducks (8/9lb when mature) they eat a lot. With my four SAs I was going through 80lbs of feed per month (roughly $30 per month). Since I have never raised any other breed of duck, the cost of feed per month for raising four ducks may be similar to other breeds. SA egg size is large though. I typically see anywhere from 80g - +100g sized eggs so maybe the duck to feed ratios even out if you take total egg weight into account.

That being said, I gave some eggs to some friends and they were so enamored with them, they requested to "sponsor" two ducks (i.e. they'd buy the ducks and the feed for all my ducks in exchange for about 6 dozen eggs per month. So they are getting duck eggs for the basement price of $5/dozen which is pretty low in my neck of the woods. But then again, I don't need to worry about wasting time @ farmer's markets or drumming up business with strangers.

For this reason I acquired two 5 month old WL ducks from a local farmer. WLs are legendary (at least on paper) in terms of their egg laying capacity and are thought of as the best egg to feed ratio egg laying duck breed (see info about the WL breed here). The SAs do not seem to be too stressed with the addition of the WL to the yard/coop and now all ducks clomp their way up the coop ramp each night @ twilight so all I have to do is shut the door and then open it again the following morning.

 

[tjalred]

From what I've read, the laying capacity is 3-5 years. SAs have been stellar layers for me. On paper, total expected eggs/year for SAs range anywhere from 200 - 270 eggs. So, if you do the calculations, you have anywhere from a 60% - 80% chance they will lay each day (which is basically what I'm seeing). Below are some quick calculations to correlate number of SA ducks to dozens of eggs per month (please let me know if I am in error). Unlike other breeds, they do not rest during the winter months (see Muscovies) and as long as you keep their exposed light per day @ 15 hours of light or more you should not see a slow down in laying frequency during the winter months (I can attest to this personally). SAs are very pretty (especially the drakes) and have good temperament, plus since they are so big, they are not flighty. I've recently mixed in some White Layer (WL) ducks in with my SAs (see below for the explanation) and the WL ducks are far more flighty than the SA ducks. If there's one knock about SAs I would think it would be the feed to egg ratio. B/c they are such big ducks (8/9lb when mature) they eat a lot. With my four SAs I was going through 80lbs of feed per month (roughly $30 per month). Since I have never raised any other breed of duck, the cost of feed per month for raising four ducks may be similar to other breeds. SA egg size is large though. I typically see anywhere from 80g - +100g sized eggs so maybe the duck to feed ratios even out if you take total egg weight into account. That being said, I gave some eggs to some friends and they were so enamored with them, they requested to "sponsor" two ducks (i.e. they'd buy the ducks and the feed for all my ducks in exchange for about 6 dozen eggs per month. So they are getting duck eggs for the basement price of $5/dozen which is pretty low in my neck of the woods. But then again, I don't need to worry about wasting time @ farmer's markets or drumming up business with strangers. For this reason I acquired two 5 month old WL ducks from a local farmer. WLs are legendary (at least on paper) in terms of their egg laying capacity and are thought of as the best egg to feed ratio egg laying duck breed (see info about the WL breed here). The SAs do not seem to be too stressed with the addition of the WL to the yard/coop and now all ducks clomp their way up the coop ramp each night @ twilight so all I have to do is shut the door and then open it again the following morning.

Thanks for all of the info. Does keeping a light on in the winter affect they're bodies at all? We have chickens and we don't have a light on during the winter because it can cause health issues (prolapsing and what not).

 

[tjalred]

Also, can mature ducks eat chicken lay mash? We give our chickens an 18% lay mash, fodder and they free range during the day. We also add homemade plum vinegar to their water (when the plum is all gone, we will go back to ACV) Will this be acceptable for the ducks? I appreciate you sharing your knowledge. We want our ducks to be as healthy and happy as our hens.

 

[smithmal]

I've personally never heard that artificial light is unhealthy for ducks. Most of the nursuries that you purchase your ducklings from specifically mentioned that artificial light should be used to ensure that egg production is not slowed or stopped during short light days:

http://www.metzerfarms.com/MaximizingEggProduction.cfm


The following was noted in "Domestic Duck Production: Science and Practice:"

The main change we are making because of this book is our use of light. Historically we have grown our ducks on natural day length and then increased the day length to 17 hours between 20 to 25 weeks of age to bring them into egg production. The authors' recommendation is to maintain the ducks on 17 hours of light their entire life and bring them into production with an increase in quality and quantity of feed when they are sexually mature. “Excellent results have been obtained by maintaining meat strain ducks and drakes on a constant photoperiod of 17 hours from day-old until the end of the breeding cycle. Since this programme is simple and applicable at all latitudes it deserves to be adopted as the standard method for rearing Pekin breeding stock.”