Recent content by tsulagvnege

The just taste like a regular egg to me. If you have trouble making a good omelet with a chicken's egg it will be easier with a muscovy egg because they hold together better when you try to flip them. The orange is darker, but the taste is the same.

pure cracked corn is not a complete feed. It lacks the needed balance of nutrients for good health. Get some layer ration that is labeled to be a balance, complete feed and they should be alright by spring if they are fertile and otherwise healthy. It is sometimes tempting to feed just...

I would say Going Quakers has it right. This is just normal duck behavior. You are in the southern hemisphere and going into the warm season. Their hormons are signalling breeding season, and they have to work out their own pecking order. You also say they are all female, so not a natural...

Ok, because the thread had originally been to educate about the crested trait, I need to clear up a misconception here. Breeding a crested to a crested causes the lethal condition in about one quarter of the eggs laid. But there are neurological issues in all the ducks that are crested...

The best we can do is educate those who don't understand exactly what the condition is and the problems it causes; and refuse to purchase from those breeders who don't eliminate the carriers from their breeding stock. If a hatchery makes a statement on their webpage that some crested...

Since you mention that the larger of the drakes is chasing the smaller one, your problem might not be too few ducks. It may just be that your larger drake is establishing his dominance over the smaller one. Since you only have two drakes the smaller one recieves all the "dominating" behavior...

So instead of 18 lets use 20 eggs. Five would be non-viable, 10 wold be crested, and 5 would be normal non crested. You would get two thirds of the eggs that hatched that are crested. So yes, you would be over run by crested ducks in no time.

If you have one crested duck and a normal drake, then 50 percent of her eggs will be crested and 50 percent normal. But if your drake is crested, then 50 percent of all the eggs of all your ducks he mates with will be crested. So yes, it doesn't take long.

Just want to clarify a point here..... Yes, the trait is caused by a genetic mutation. But that mutation only occurs naturally in one out of every 100,000 to 1,000,000 eggs hatched. But when a hatchery makes the statement that you might receive eggs and/or birds that carry the crested...

I think if people knew the truth about the crested trait they might realize it is really irresponsible to purposely breed for the trait. We should be doing all we can to eliminate the trait completely. And we could if we knew how it is transmitted and understoud the problems it can cause in...

Now that I see this picture of the mother's and babies I might suggest it's time to wean the mother's from the babies. Put just the mother's in with the chickens to separate them from their babies. The babies look old enough to be with the Drake unless he is trying to mate with them, in that...

How about you move the mother's and babies in the pen with the chickens and keep the Drake in the pen with the other ducks without babies?

Thank you Miss Lydia. I'll take a look at them.

I live in East Texas, so I would say I live in a warm climate. The heat is probably a bigger concern here than the winter cold. Although it has been down to 28 the past couple of nights, we usually don't have more than 2 or 3 nights in a row that gets that cold before it warms up for a while...

Would like to see pictures of your coops. I need to build one and would like to see what is working for other people. I have 13 birds, but will need to be able to have at least for separate compartments to isolate the different breeding groups.