The khaki-Campbell duck Thread !!!!!!!!

[monavillemare]

I recently started penning my ducks at night. For the past year they have been free roaming and splitting their time between the catfish pond for overnight and then all around the house during the day. Last year they laid their eggs around the house. This year they just started dropping them in the pond, everywhere. They seemed to have lost their nesting urge.
In the coop there are 24 chickens assorted breeds and 8 ducks 1 drake Rouen, 1 hen Rouen, 2 drake Black east Indies, and 3 female BLI. There doen't seem to be any fighting or other coexistence problems. But for the ease of locating eggs I fenced off an area about 22 x 10 foot for the ducks and their straw. The eggs are still willy nilly everywhere but atleast now I am not fishing them out of the pond.

 

[caesargirl]

Advice please....I have kept hens for 9 years, I currently have two older EE's left and have 4 EE's pullets coming next month. I have been wanted to add a couple ducks specifically KC's to my small backyard flock in the same run. So I have a few questions...do these ducks mix well with chickens? I do plan to let the ducks out in my yard a lot more often than my hens as I have a decent sized yard with a lots of cottage garden style beds for them to forage for bugs as well as plenty of grass. But I want to know if when they are in the run together will two ducks get along ok with 6 hens? My other question is I would ideally love to have a drake and duck pair but I'm afraid the drake will constantly try to mate with my hens. But I don't want eggs coming out my ears with two ducks plus my 4 hens (my older hens haven't laid in a year). Any advice would be helpful for those who have mixed flocks especially with KCs.

I don't keep chickens, so I can't comment on that. But drakes can be pretty nasty when it comes to mating. If you're looking for eggs, but don't want them coming out your ears(!) feed them back to the critters! A drake will mate anything, constantly. And can mate a duck or chicken to death. A good drake/duck ratio is 1:4. And unless you want ducklings, a drake is unnecessary.
I've never had a problem with too many eggs... My neighbors, coworkers, mail lady, ducks and dogs all love them.
Hopefully someone else can comment on the chicken/duck combo.

 

[Robeenop]

I have 30 chickens, including two roosters..with 2 Roeun Ducks and three Khaki Campbell's. I get 4 to 5 duck eggs everyday. Plus with most all of my chickens finished with their molt, and started laying again this week, I collected 18 chicken eggs and 5 duck eggs yesterday. Half my flock will be 2 yrs in March, and the rest 1 year in April. Everybody gets along fine. No Drake though and my roosters could care less about ducks. They all "hang out together" works well for me. I have "plenty" of room for everybody.

 

[fancychicklady]

I have 2 female KC's and 1 male KC mixed with 15 chickens. They all do great together and my ducks are pretty sure they are chickens

 

[HennyPenny2]

Thank you for the replies, I think I may just stick to two females to be on the safe side although I would love to hear from more people to raise a small mixed flock . I could always divide part of the run for just the ducks if I do decide to get a male and female.

 

[nchvac]

Or perhaps there is a breed that maybe the drakes aren't quite as aggressive?
Did we ever determine what a good cross with a KC duck would be for a good meat duck using the KC for egg production?

 

[RoboDuck]

The wife just told me she wants some khaki campbell hatching eggs. I don't see any currently listed in BST so if anyone here sells them or knows a reliable seller, I'd appreciate the info. Thanks.

 

[nchvac]

I bought some eggs from a lady that raises Pekins. When I met her she went over the whole spill about how they are better for you and all of that. She then assured me that she had washed the eggs and said that since they are waterfoul the eggs are stained because the "ducks lay them wherever, in the mud and all".
So I have chickens and I know the white eggs get stained some if they lay on manure, etc.
So we tried the eggs the other morning and when I put them up to my mouth I could smell a distinctive smell, not sour or anything bad, but off if you know what I mean. I ate the eggs and they were good but they did have the same off type taste. Not a gage taste, but one I could have seen myself doing without. So I know different things taste different and I don't expect everything to taste like chicken so to speak and I was thinking maybe that is just something to get used to.

Today my wife asked me to help her make some bread sticks and when reading the ingredients she called for 2 eggs, so I said lets use the duck egg. So I go to open the egg and I noticed real quick it was brittle and cracked into small 1/4" fragments, which I do not want in the mix, so I started pealing off the 1/4 inch pieces of shell from the air sac. It became clear to me very quickly that if these were like chicken eggs that they had been stored for at least a couple of weeks, which gave me a good opurtunity to show my wife why eggs that are stored peal easier when hard boiled due to the evaporation of moisture which gives more room for expansion and all of that. So basically instead of cracking the shell like normal I revealed a large portion of the sack and broke it. Then I smelled the smell only a little stronger and it smells like mud, light mud smell but still mud, which I have never seen in a bread stick recipe- we will see how they turn out.

I have cleaned a goose before with that same smell and an older fellow told me it is because they basically eat in the mud so I am thinking either that is the same case with the eggs or maybe while the eggs were laying in the mud they got the taste? Or maybe that is just duck egg taste?
I don't know but what I am wondering is if you get the same taste in an egg from a duck that doesn't have access to mud like a duck around a pond would. And as far as my description of cracking the egg and the way it fragmented and all of that, is that the normal duck egg experience, because if so I think I will stick to chickens please. But I do think it is cool that the lady has so many eggs this time of the year because I have 7 chickens (hens) and I am lucky to get 1 egg a day.

 

[nchvac]

Check Ebay, they probably have every type hatching egg there is at some point in the year. I have not had much luck shiping chicken eggs and I am wondering if duck eggs do any better if someone knows. I have hatched my own eggs with shipped eggs and only got 1 shipped egg to hatch while the eggs from my hutch hatched 95% and 100%.

 

[RoboDuck]

We've hatched 100's of shipped eggs. Gotta pick your sources carefully. I was hoping to find someone here that sells KC ducks. I tend to trust people here more so than those selling on Ebay.