Ducks ?

[Cats Critters]

I'm considering them. Whats a good egg laying breed?
Can they live with my Chickens?
And any thing else you can think of!

 

[Henrietta23]

Cat's Critters :

I'm considering them. Whats a good egg laying breed?
Can they live with my Chickens?
And any thing else you can think of!

Hi Cat's. I'm new to ducks myself and have done some reading. Storey's Guide to Raising Ducks is an excellent resource. One of the best laying ducks are khaki campbells. I brooded mine separately from my chicks. The ducklings get everything wet! I have just moved the ducks outside and I do have them in their own pen. My two adult hens free range and I'm not ready to let the ducks do that yet. Not sure if I'll keep this arrangement as is or not. I rarely do!​

 

[GwenFarms]

I don't know if your looking for eating eggs, or hatching eggs, but either way you can't go wrong with muscovies. They lay better than other other duck. I currently have pekins, but I think we are going to get back into muscovies for eating eggs. They are great to bake with.

 

[swampducks]

Indian Runners are very good egg layers. I have one female and she's a little egg laying dynamo. Mine is sitting on a nest and she is still laying an egg nearly every day somewhere outside the nest.

I remember, I read it in a recent issue of Backyard Poultry Oct/Nov 2007. (Of course, it's an article not online)

here's an egg synopsis per year:

Campbell 250-325
Runner 150-300
Pekin 125-225
Muscovy 50-125
Rouen 35-125
Mallard 25-75
Call 25-50

 

[GwenFarms]

Thats the same profile that Storey's shows, however, I just don't find that my pekins lay as well as the muscovies did. I suppose it frustrates me that the pekins won't sit too. I didn't realize that when I got them. So, thats something to also consider when you are looking into ducks, if you are wanting to hatch.

Storey's recommends calls and mallards as excellent mothers. They list muscovies as fair, however I've had muscovies to hatch out clutches of 20 eggs in the past and have never had a problem getting them to sit. They list pekins as good, but these I have won't sit and all the info I've gotten off of the board and online says that the sitting instinct has been bred out of them.

 

[Zack717]

I must agree with Gwen. I have four muscovies and LOVE them! They are pretty big but they lay very tasty big eggs. In addition mine seem to enjoy perching in my seven foot japanese maple to "hunt" for bugs. The best thing is they completely took out every slug that was in my yard.

 

[chicken_boy_Kurt]

My favorite are calls, but if you want an egg laying breed I'd reccomend the campbell or the runner. For meat you should get muscovies or pekins.

 

[greyfields]

Quote:
Campbell or Pekin

Quote:
They can 'live' in the sense that you can close them in at night together. But, ducks must have a free range (or very large run) during the day. They'll quickly turn any standard chicken run into mud. Waterfowl browse and forage and can be trained to "go to bed" at night. It seems wrong to lock them in small areas behind chicken wire. It's not what waterfowl enjoy and they're doing you no good eating insects if they can't patrol your yard.

Quote:
I would pick ducks based on their appearnce. Find something you like to look at that is beautiful to you. For me, the top three breeds would be Silver Appleyard, Welsh Harlqeuin or Saxony.

 

[Rare Feathers Farm]

Quote:
Khaki Campbells are supposedly the best layers...my Muscovies do okay--but they tend to get SUPER broody & stop laying, even if I remove the eggs?

 

[Cats Critters]

I'm looking for one that does not go broody constly acashil yes but not a ton