End of egg laying season?

[solarpup]

Having started with Mallard drakes, we've had two Swedish hens for 15 months now. This is our first egg laying season. The girls started in mid-February, and despite the brutal heat of this summer, they've only skipped a few days here and there. By my count, they've each laid about 190 eggs over 200 days. (We haven't bought eggs from a store since February, and have done a lot of baking over the past 8 months.)

But for about 3 or 4 days in a row now, seemingly nothing. Unless they are hiding them better than usual (which is always possible – every now and then we've found a new spot, and just a few days ago, fished an egg out of the pond, with its shell dissolved away and the egg bloated to a large size).

Should we expect that this is the end of the season? We're off on vacation in a few days, and were thinking about leaving the duck/house sitter with the non-calcium fortified food instead of the egg layer diet. We had promised the duck sitter fresh eggs any day she wanted, but alas, I think we're down to perhaps the last half dozen in the fridge.

Or should we expect a few more random days of laying?

Mind you, if I was producing 5% of my body weight per day in eggs for 7 months straight, I think I'd be ready for a break, too.

 

[Sfraker]

Mine are taking a break right now to molt. Once that it done that will get back to laying just not as regularly until spring. Are your girls molting? You can expect no eggs for 2 months or so during that time.

 

[solarpup]

Hmmm. Good point. There's not a lot of evidence of molting yet, but it's about time for that to start happening. (The one mallard drake we still have is definitely into his molting plumage, and he's starting to drop his feathers.)

They've also been ravenous for greens, more so then usual. (We used to have water hyacinths in the pond, until a two day feast this past weekend...)