I have a pair of cayuga ducks and 12 chickens. They have been raised together and all go into the coop together at night. They get along pretty well and are about 15 weeks now. In the coop at night the chickens go to their roosts and the ducks sleep on the floor. (I have a milk crate on the floor for them as well.) My question is when my female starts laying is this enough privacy for her or will she shy away from laying in a coop with a dozen other chickens? Anybody have a similar set up?
Hi there, I have one female Pekin that has been raised with 5 other chickens since she was two days old. She is my only duck. They all freerange during the day, and share the same coop. My chickens have nesting boxes about 18" off of the ground and most lay their eggs in there. I do have two hens that lay their eggs underneath it, on the floor of the coop. Pickles, my duck, lays her eggs on the opposite side of the coop. She seems to be content with doing that. I think the fact that she was raised with the chickens makes her comfortable with that, but I could be wrong. I'm assuming that your pair of Cayugas is one male and one female? It has been awhile since I have had a mating pair, but I remember them being a little territorial of their nest. (mine were Cayugas too) I guess if your coop is big enough, they may feel like they have enough space to share. Ultimately, the female will let you know where she wants to lay her eggs, I guess. My duck actually layed one in her pool once! Crazy, huh?
MY muscovy hens lay their eggs in with my chickens. One day I went out to check for eggs and my duck and brahma hen where sharing the same nest box. So sweet
I have Muscovies that go into the henhouse to lay their eggs in the nesting boxes that the chickens use, those are the only duck eggs I collect. They have several nests under our house where they hatch their ducklings and I never touch those eggs. Here is a picture of one of my Muscovies who was in the nest box today to lay me an egg. Our nest boxes are serveral feet off the ground, but she has no problem flying up to it and the chickens dont mind sharing the boxes with the ducks.
my chicks and ducks are in seperate pens but get out in yard together during the day some of my chickens wait till the ducks are distracted and then go into the duck house to lay their eggs only 3 out of 25 chickens do this ! identity crisis????lol or nest envy?
We had one of our pekin ducks lay eggs in our nest boxes. The big surprise was that one of our hens went broody on what we thought were two chicken eggs. BIG surprise when they hatched. We actually had to put her in a pen by herself because she went crazy when the ducklings would go into the puddles! LOL She was a great mom and after that we learned to identify duck eggs from chicken eggs.
We used to run Muscovies and chickens together and they shared the same coop. there was some pushing as to who would get the top roosts, but the Muscovies claimed the lower layer of nest boxes and didn't allow chickens... Of course part of that was our fault, in order to keep the ducks laying where we wanted them to lay we used nest eggs otherwise the ducks would sneak off and hide a nest somewhere and then sneak off and brood them.
Thanks for all of the good info. Since they all seem to get along really well now I guess we'll just wait and see what happens. Your input makes me more comfortable that they probably won't mind sharing the space however. Time will tell...
I have a free ranging peking male duck and two roosters one buff orp and one rir and they are loose in the back yard 24/7 and the peking duck is the boss but they don't lay together. I don't have any female ducks. Thought I would share what I know with the boys. They sleep in the shelter with the hay and tack on pallets the roosters do and I don't know where the peking lays at night probably on guard it varies I am sure he sure is the character.
