Female Runner Duck laying deformed eggs... advice needed?

[SweetBlossom]

Hi there, I am relatively new to owning ducks and have had a little bit of "duck drama" recently.

I got a couple of "Indian runner" ducklings back in April, Blossom and Daisy, aged 10 days. All fine, grew up nice and healthy, turned out Daisy was in fact a Donald and at about 4 months, August 9th in fact. Blossom laid her first egg.

From then on Donald started to become quite aggressive towards my mum and myself, which we were told is quite common amongst Drakes who had been hand reared but he was also becoming increasingly aggressive towards Blossom our female. So much so, she became terrified of going in the pond and would panic if she fell in. We were told this may be because they are in fact brother and sister as this is quite unusual behaviour between a male and female duck?

So we decided we would have to let Donald go and he's just up the road on a lovely farm with other ducks, chickens, goats etc and has settled in well. We go and see him often.

Once we started looking for another female as company for Blossom we realised that our ducks were most likely a cross. Look like 'Blue Magpie Runner' but not as slim? We're not sure but they're beautiful anyway. We found a "female" runner close by who is a little younger than Blossom, thought great! Got her home and turns out Lily is a Lionel. Another drake! The people we bought him off refused to believe he was a male as he had not yet go his curly tail feather but you could definitely hear the rasp in his voice. So he couldn't go back there and I wouldn't have taken him for fear he'd be fattened up for Christmas anyway!

All was well but Lionel has now got his curl and Blossom has once again started to look a bit rough. She stopped laying last Wednesday (October 1st) and the temperature has dropped here in Wales so we thought it was down to that. But the house has become increasingly messy with poo the last week and a half which is not normal and some of it has been diarrhoea (brown and thick). This afternoon, Blossom laid something very strange. A fully formed egg, within another soft-shell egg, my Dad said it wasn't very pleasant and she is still pooping the brown thick diarrhoea but the house isn't as messy as it was last week.

Their water is changed daily. They are fed layers pellets, sweetcorn and on occasion corn-flakes. The house bedding was being changed every day last week but that has calmed down now.

Lionel came from a farm with lots of other ducks and chickens, and I'm wondering if he has brought something with him? Or whether Blossom has something else as Lionel is fine. Both are still eating fine also.

I would take her to the vets but our local vet isn't very confident with dealing with my ducks as he has very little knowledge.

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for the long post but I felt if I explained the whole situation it may help!

Thank you!

 

[needlessjunk]

Let me preface this by saying that I am not an expert and my ducks are only 11 weeks old. But I would be suspicious that your female is stressed and that is the root of the problem. You really need more females. It sounds like since she is the only one she is getting too much attention from the present and former drake. I also wonder if getting more females would of help the aggression with your other drake. I hope someone else can give you tried and true advice. I have noticed that there seem to be lots of problems with having too few females to males that are easily solved. As for the egg issue... How long has she been laying? It is not uncommon to have unusual eggs when they just start out.

 

[SweetBlossom]

That is something we considered and researched but found he may still be aggressive towards us. I know he's only a duck but it was quite unnerving and also upsetting that he acted towards us in the way he did. I'm still looking for another female but as it's coming to the end of the season, it's proving quite difficult I was also told by the person I got them off as ducklings, that a male and female would live quite happily together.

With the egg laying, I did wonder if it was because she was still young, however her eggs up until now had been fine and there's also the diarrhoea...

Any help is appreciated though! Would love to get another female to see if it helped the situation but they are proving to be few and far between around here!