Duck or Chicken eggs?

[Laura78]

I've just started getting eggs from my birds and can't tell if some of them are duck or chicken eggs. My ducks are only 6-7 months old, but some of my eggs are rather big. I have 5 that are the size of XL chicken eggs, 4 white and 1 green. The duck breeds are Rowans (sp?) and Buffs. My chicken breeds are: Buff Opington, Black Austrolorp, Easter Eggers, Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red, and Light Brahma. I've been also getting 3 different shades of brown eggs, one is almost a redish color. Chickens are less than a year old.

 

[chickndoglover]

I get white and green eggs from my ducks and all the other colors from the chickens, when the ducks are full grown you will definately know by size, the ducks are way bigger.

 

[Laura78]

I guess I'm being thrown off because I thought ducks wouldn't lay for the first year of life.

 

[Wifezilla]

Buffs can lay over 200 eggs per year. The buff I had laid about every other day even in Winter.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

look real close at your eggs.
The ducks will have a completely different texture. It will be very smooth. If you can imagine looking at paint samples in a hardware store. Now the chicken eggs will be much more poreous, regardless of the breed or color. I never raised buff ducks, but the Rouan's eggs should have a green tinge to them. They are delicious fried......all duck eggs, that is. I prefer them to chicken eggs. I wouldn't recommend boiling them. They are too firm and will seem like rubber. Someone else might have a different opinion, but that is mine. Some people like putting them in cakes, but I wouldn't. They taste for too good for me to want to put in a cake. Use a chicken egg for that.
Now the ducks will lay eggs on the ground, mainly at night and you can pick them up in the morning when you go out and feed them and turn them loose in the run. A chicken will also do this, but will probably try to hide them and create a nest......that is if they don't have a box nest with a bunch of wooden eggs to encourage them to lay there. A duck will never lay in that situation.

 

[Laura78]

Thank you. We have discovered that I'm getting 2 duck eggs and about 3 chicken eggs a day. At first the ducks were laying outside by the pool. Now they're laying in the coop on the floor. The chickens still seem to lay where ever they want. I've gotten some plastic eggs and put them in the nesting boxes but that hasn't seemed to teach the chickens where to lay.