Ducks laying

[trainman]

I have 8 Pekins. Two Drakes and 6 hens. I bought them in March 2014 and they started laying around August 2014. I was getting between 2-3 eggs per day up until recently. They slacked off to about 3-4 per week for a few weeks and in the past 2 weeks I've seen no eggs. I have had issues with crows eating them but apparently they can't carry them off so just eat them in place. I'm not seeing any shells around the pond. They always lay just after sunrise so I've been sitting out there waiting to see if another varmint is taking them and haven't seen any other critters. Question is.........do ducks have a very short laying life? No feed changes or other trauma has happened. Very strange! Any ideas?

 

[Miss Lydia]

I have 8 Pekins. Two Drakes and 6 hens. I bought them in March 2014 and they started laying around August 2014. I was getting between 2-3 eggs per day up until recently. They slacked off to about 3-4 per week for a few weeks and in the past 2 weeks I've seen no eggs. I have had issues with crows eating them but apparently they can't carry them off so just eat them in place. I'm not seeing any shells around the pond. They always lay just after sunrise so I've been sitting out there waiting to see if another varmint is taking them and haven't seen any other critters. Question is.........do ducks have a very short laying life? No feed changes or other trauma has happened. Very strange! Any ideas?

They do take breaks from time to time and after molt it can take sometimes 2 months or more before they start back laying.
Length of daylight also affects them. You may or may not see eggs again till spring. Stress too can cause them to stop laying anything disrupting their lives you know about?

 

[trainman]

Duh! I hadn't given molting a thought. They have all been molting apparently from the zillion feathers in and around the pond. That could very well be what's going on with them. I'll just have to wait and see.

As to any traumatic events, living here in the mountains we have a lot of varmints. My chickens seem to be terrorized by the Great Horned Owls and Red tail Hawks more than anything besides dogs and the dogs are easy to remove from the scene. It's illegal to shoot any birds of prey but it's open season on stupid, destructive dogs. The ducks seem to draw the attention of the Bald Eagles. For some reason they swoop down right over the ducks all the time and do low-level fly-bys. I haven't seen them make a deliberate effort to attack one but they just buzz them. Who knows. It really scares them pretty bad and they are very tense for the rest of the day. The pond is frequented every day by a Great Blue Heron but he doesn't bother them. I think they bother him more than the other way. They will swim over in his area and I guess it messes up his fishing and frog gigging as he'll fly to another area of the pond to get away from them.

Well, hopefully they will start laying soon. We don't eat the duck eggs but I finally found someone that really loves them and wants them so I can give them to her. Until we met her we would just scramble them and feed them to the chickens. They love scrambled duck eggs.

Thanks for the help,
trainman