marxrab
Chirping
- Mar 24, 2020
- 23
- 27
- 74
Hi all,
Here is my problem. I have six ducks: one male and five females. Three ladies and my male are Black Swedish, one female is Pekin, and one female is Khaki Campbell. All of my girls are laying eggs fine except for my Khaki Campbell. It's been three months now that I've gotten only soft eggs. From what others say I figured she needed more calcium so I tried that. I've read all the forums and tried changing her diet. I separated her out at feeding time to make sure she was getting enough oyster shell thinking the bigger ducks might be hogging all the food. I switched food brands three times. Right now I'm on a some expensive feed that has oyster shell mixed into it to see if it helps.
I've been hatching fertile eggs right now and ended up getting two that look like Black Swedish/Khaki Campbell mixes so I know she laid one shelled egg a month ago and another 2 weeks ago from the age of the ducklings. Both ducklings look like Black Swedish but have brown on their chest and are super small so I assume they are Khaki Campbell mixes. I have no idea if I did something around that time that helped because she was also giving me soft eggs .
She eats great. She drinks great. She's very active and I see her swimming and jumping up on this tall walled raised bed all the time. We live on a mountain and she sometimes scales a steep part to graze while free-ranging so she seems healthy and spunky.
One thing I noticed recently is sometimes she just has to lay down. Like her tail goes low and she opens her wings and kind of looks like she's forced to lay down. She lays her soft eggs around 6:00 PM everyday and this is around the time I see this happen. Not sure if this is normal laying behavior since the others lay inside their house and I never see them lay. I assumed the first time she was ready to lay an egg or was sick. I picked her up and carried her to her house and put her in the nest inside. After several minutes no egg but she was running around like normal, went swimming in the pool, and had dinner with the rest of the ducks. Once I put the ducks up for the night I found a soft egg in their pond. I'd say 80% of her eggs I find in the pond after 6:00 PM. The rest I find in the front yard in the spot where my ducks all hang out in the last hour before I put them up at night.
From some forums I've heard it could be a gland problem that is sometimes unfixable? I don't know. Since I got a few fertile, normal eggs recently maybe there is something else I can try? I don't know what to do. I feel like I've read everything and tried so many different tactics. We don't have any vets nearby that take ducks and it's a 3 hour drive to another state to the nearest one which we can't do since that's a six hour drive for one day plus we're in quarantine from the Covid-19.
Does anyone have advice?
Here is my problem. I have six ducks: one male and five females. Three ladies and my male are Black Swedish, one female is Pekin, and one female is Khaki Campbell. All of my girls are laying eggs fine except for my Khaki Campbell. It's been three months now that I've gotten only soft eggs. From what others say I figured she needed more calcium so I tried that. I've read all the forums and tried changing her diet. I separated her out at feeding time to make sure she was getting enough oyster shell thinking the bigger ducks might be hogging all the food. I switched food brands three times. Right now I'm on a some expensive feed that has oyster shell mixed into it to see if it helps.
I've been hatching fertile eggs right now and ended up getting two that look like Black Swedish/Khaki Campbell mixes so I know she laid one shelled egg a month ago and another 2 weeks ago from the age of the ducklings. Both ducklings look like Black Swedish but have brown on their chest and are super small so I assume they are Khaki Campbell mixes. I have no idea if I did something around that time that helped because she was also giving me soft eggs .
She eats great. She drinks great. She's very active and I see her swimming and jumping up on this tall walled raised bed all the time. We live on a mountain and she sometimes scales a steep part to graze while free-ranging so she seems healthy and spunky.
One thing I noticed recently is sometimes she just has to lay down. Like her tail goes low and she opens her wings and kind of looks like she's forced to lay down. She lays her soft eggs around 6:00 PM everyday and this is around the time I see this happen. Not sure if this is normal laying behavior since the others lay inside their house and I never see them lay. I assumed the first time she was ready to lay an egg or was sick. I picked her up and carried her to her house and put her in the nest inside. After several minutes no egg but she was running around like normal, went swimming in the pool, and had dinner with the rest of the ducks. Once I put the ducks up for the night I found a soft egg in their pond. I'd say 80% of her eggs I find in the pond after 6:00 PM. The rest I find in the front yard in the spot where my ducks all hang out in the last hour before I put them up at night.
From some forums I've heard it could be a gland problem that is sometimes unfixable? I don't know. Since I got a few fertile, normal eggs recently maybe there is something else I can try? I don't know what to do. I feel like I've read everything and tried so many different tactics. We don't have any vets nearby that take ducks and it's a 3 hour drive to another state to the nearest one which we can't do since that's a six hour drive for one day plus we're in quarantine from the Covid-19.
Does anyone have advice?
