TattooQ27
Songster
A bit of background:
We have a Pekin drake, an Ancona duck, a Blue Swedish duck and a Welsh Harlequin duck. We have been feeding them the 16% layer crumbles since the ducks started laying eggs about 2 months ago. When the temps started dipping below freezing, we changed their food to a 50/50 mix of the layer crumbles and cracked corn. We generally get 3-4 eggs every 24 hours and they seem to be decent quality. We have 2 heat lamps in their stall and use the deep litter method for bedding. They have access to their waterer and also to a heated bucket so they can clean their nostrils. They are all right around 9 months old.
We recently had to buy a bag of the layer pellets because our TSC was out of the crumbles and yesterday we noticed that our Blue Swede duck is losing weight, nothing significant but it is noticable. We are trying to figure out how to deal with it but aren't sure and could use some opinions. We were thinking that perhaps we should change the feed back to the higher protein feed for the winter or maybe just that she doesn't like the pellets and we need to switch back to the crumbles. Any ideas?
Also, we have zero interest in hatching ducklings with the temps as low as they are so right now we are just tossing the eggs into the woods but we were toying with the idea of giving some of them away to someone who might want to try to hatch them out (if we could find anyone who would want to do a test run with mutt duck eggs). Our problem is that we aren't sure how to care for the eggs before we have enough to ship them out. In the cold temps (20's by day, single digits at night) is there any crucial time frame for getting the eggs inside or are they ok to stay outside? We generally collect the eggs around 7pm every night. When we do collect them, should we bring the ones we want to give away inside or will the abrupt temperature change hurt them in any way?
Thanks!
We have a Pekin drake, an Ancona duck, a Blue Swedish duck and a Welsh Harlequin duck. We have been feeding them the 16% layer crumbles since the ducks started laying eggs about 2 months ago. When the temps started dipping below freezing, we changed their food to a 50/50 mix of the layer crumbles and cracked corn. We generally get 3-4 eggs every 24 hours and they seem to be decent quality. We have 2 heat lamps in their stall and use the deep litter method for bedding. They have access to their waterer and also to a heated bucket so they can clean their nostrils. They are all right around 9 months old.
We recently had to buy a bag of the layer pellets because our TSC was out of the crumbles and yesterday we noticed that our Blue Swede duck is losing weight, nothing significant but it is noticable. We are trying to figure out how to deal with it but aren't sure and could use some opinions. We were thinking that perhaps we should change the feed back to the higher protein feed for the winter or maybe just that she doesn't like the pellets and we need to switch back to the crumbles. Any ideas?
Also, we have zero interest in hatching ducklings with the temps as low as they are so right now we are just tossing the eggs into the woods but we were toying with the idea of giving some of them away to someone who might want to try to hatch them out (if we could find anyone who would want to do a test run with mutt duck eggs). Our problem is that we aren't sure how to care for the eggs before we have enough to ship them out. In the cold temps (20's by day, single digits at night) is there any crucial time frame for getting the eggs inside or are they ok to stay outside? We generally collect the eggs around 7pm every night. When we do collect them, should we bring the ones we want to give away inside or will the abrupt temperature change hurt them in any way?
Thanks!
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