Ducks and Survival

[meldelfc]

The Duck ABC's :

I also live in the Pacific Northwest and have Saxonies. My birds layed all winter, never stopped. Some are molting right now, which means they stop laying for a week. Saxonies are a dual purpose duck. They are not only heavy egg layers, but also meat birds. A bird is about 9 pounds! Plus they have less fat tissue then regular domestic ducks. They are also quite winter hardy. We have -8 this winter and they had no issue being outside with provided hay to sit on to protect their feet. They do sleep in a duck house at night.

Thanks! That is good to know.

 

[maralynn28]

I don't know if my ducks would have laid all winter had I let them but I was so overrun with eggs, I used Holderread's recommended way of getting them to stop laying (forced shortened day, change in feed, etc). I still had eggs to use over the winter even though they weren't laying for me during those months.

Point is, even if they're notactively laying, doesn't mean you won't have eggs as the eggs do keep for shockingly long amounts of time. I only have one laying duck now and I still have a backlog of 30+ eggs to go through. Although I don't eat them as fast as they lay them, I've only had about 3 eggs that seemed "questionable" the whole year I've been getting home-laid eggs. My duck is sure good to me!