Duck Egg Questions....First Time Gathering eggs....

[SolomonMan]

All,
My family and I have 6 Khaki Campbells that are free range (5 hens and 1 drake).....they are in a half acre fenced in pond area.....They have a large enclosure they do not seem to be to interested in.....

They recently have begun to lay eggs.....found 4 this morning.....All eggs were in different locations....and each one slightly bigger than the other....

Anyways we originally hoped to consume duck eggs....along with our chicken eggs....Is there a way to know the age of found eggs?

Do they go bad quickly?

I assume gathering eggs daily will roughly tell me age of egg but what if we miss one....

I ended up tossing the 4 eggs as Its been 95+ degrees the last few days and I had concern about whether they would be edible....as all eggs were found in the wide open sun ...none were found in the shade.

Will ducks use nest boxes?.... or lay in the same place?

Any suggestions on how to gather eggs from our ducks?

Thanks
Chris

 

[robinjs11]

Mine havent started laying yet but someone wrote something on here that made sense. They said that ducks will lay 1 egg a day until they get approx 10-15 then start laying on them to hatch. The first egg they laid on day 1 doesnt start developing until the last egg is laid and the hen starts sitting so all the ducklings develop and hatch at the same time. If an egg can sit there for 2 weeks before the hen sits on it and it can hatch a duckling, it should be fine to eat even if you dont find it for a couple of days. Some ducks will use nests and others refuse.