Duck laying eggs in chicken nestboxes?

[Chickiee]

Is this normal? I thought ducks laid eggs anywhere, but we have a Pekin that seems to be laying eggs near and sometimes in our chickens' nestboxes. Also, how often to Pekins lay eggs? This one is about every 3-4 days that I'm finding. There may be some she's not putting in the coop. Thanks!

 

[Miss Lydia]

Is this normal? I thought ducks laid eggs anywhere, but we have a Pekin that seems to be laying eggs near and sometimes in our chickens' nestboxes. Also, how often to Pekins lay eggs? This one is about every 3-4 days that I'm finding. There may be some she's not putting in the coop. Thanks!

i have a couple of muscovy ducks that like to lay in the chicken nest boxes. not sure on your other questions since i don't have pekin

 

[nickie]

My experience with Pekins is they lay every day once their cycle is established. If she's young she may still be working the kinks out.

 

[Chickiee]

Thanks everyone! She just started laying in the last couple weeks.

 

[tbitt]

My ducks like to lay in nests.

Have you tried making them their own boxes (same as the chicken boxes, just bigger) ?

 

[Chickiee]

Haven't tried to make ducks their own boxes. Funny thing is I told my husband about 2 weeks ago that the ducks (or at least one of the 2) are hanging out in the nestboxes and that we should make the nestbox openings smaller so they don't get in there and squish the chickens' eggs. Now that one of the ducks is laying eggs in there, I think we'll keep the boxes just the way they ate. How convenient for collecting eggs! I thought I'd be finding duck eggs all over the yard. We're obviously fairly new with the whole poultry thing.

 

[tomcatbubba]

I have Khaki Campbells that lay in my chicken nest boxes. Come to think of it I also have Guineas that do the same thing so maybe my flock is all messed up......

 

[jdywntr]

I had a muscovy that would sneak into the chicken coop to lay. I promptly put a stop to that because I wanted her to go broody and not in a nest off of the ground. For a few days, I didn't let her out of the duck run until a little later than normal and I made her a nice nest in the duck run. She quickly started using her nest.
My only concern would be that chickens can get kind of nasty sometimes if they want in to a nest box. They could peck at your duck and this could injure your duck. My same muscovy was pecked by one of my chickens while whe was setting.

 

[Chickiee]

Good to know about the chance of pecking. It does seem that the duck is using the one nestbox that is most popular with the chickens. So the big news is that yesterday I found what I think are 2 (yes, 2) duck eggs in the same nestbox! I guess that means that not only duck Bonnie is a female, but also duck Clyde. Geez, that one nestbox is getting popular!

 

[Papalote Roos]

I have a duck (black and white) that's laying eggs in the nest of a brooding hen. Problem is we have found broken and missing chicken eggs. This is frustrating since we were hoping to add chicks to the flock. What is the problem? What do I need to do.