- Aug 5, 2014
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I've never seen anything like this:
This was laid by one of our ducks yesterday. The coin is for scale (roughly the same size as a dime). The shell is very hard.
We have been keeping ducks for just over a year. We started with 11. When egg sales looked promising we decided to increase the flock. No POL were available locally and we found an advert in the local classifieds (like Craig's List, I imagine) for some very cheap adult ducks (cue alarm bells). We visited the guy who was selling them and he was clearly passionate about all kinds of poultry and simply had too many. He explained that the ducks on sale were getting old now, probably only had another season of egg laying in them. This was fine for our purposes, we just wanted to bridge the gap while we hatched some of our own and they grew to POL. After that they would be duck soup.
We purchased 5 ducks and introduced them to our flock. Instantly all egg production dropped, including amongst chickens who live with the ducks. We put this down to the fact that we had unsettled the flock by the sudden increase and it would settle down again. Egg production didn't increase all summer and the ducks are now in moult.
We did end up eating a couple of the newer ducks (they weren't laying anyway and it was a friend's birthday). I chose one which had a much lower bottom than the rest and a more distinct waddle - it appeared (to my untrained eye) to be a bit older than the others. When I was butchering it, the duck's oviduct was completely full of dark water and there were several nasty, grey-looking, shrivelled ova. I did find some information relating to ducks' retention of water but I can't find it now. In any case, it seemed like just one duck was affected and the duck in question was now dead - no further action needed.
But this egg that got laid yesterday has renewed my concern. I realise the water retention and this new, strange egg are probably different problems, however it has raised my concern over the health of the flock. I have done some quick reading up on Infectious Bronchitis and I've been appalled by what I've found. My urgent questions are these:
1 - does this look/sound like IB to you? (Would appreciate it if you could kindly qualify your opinion with any research/evidence you may have, yours or otherwise) If not, what else would you suspect?
2 - can this pass from ducks to chickens? (Our chickens and ducks live together)
3 - can it be carried by the male ducks?
4 - I have read that, once infected, a bird is a carrier for life. Does this mean all future hatchings will probably get infected? Is the only permanent solution to cull the entire flock?
Many thanks for any and all advice.
This was laid by one of our ducks yesterday. The coin is for scale (roughly the same size as a dime). The shell is very hard.
We have been keeping ducks for just over a year. We started with 11. When egg sales looked promising we decided to increase the flock. No POL were available locally and we found an advert in the local classifieds (like Craig's List, I imagine) for some very cheap adult ducks (cue alarm bells). We visited the guy who was selling them and he was clearly passionate about all kinds of poultry and simply had too many. He explained that the ducks on sale were getting old now, probably only had another season of egg laying in them. This was fine for our purposes, we just wanted to bridge the gap while we hatched some of our own and they grew to POL. After that they would be duck soup.
We purchased 5 ducks and introduced them to our flock. Instantly all egg production dropped, including amongst chickens who live with the ducks. We put this down to the fact that we had unsettled the flock by the sudden increase and it would settle down again. Egg production didn't increase all summer and the ducks are now in moult.
We did end up eating a couple of the newer ducks (they weren't laying anyway and it was a friend's birthday). I chose one which had a much lower bottom than the rest and a more distinct waddle - it appeared (to my untrained eye) to be a bit older than the others. When I was butchering it, the duck's oviduct was completely full of dark water and there were several nasty, grey-looking, shrivelled ova. I did find some information relating to ducks' retention of water but I can't find it now. In any case, it seemed like just one duck was affected and the duck in question was now dead - no further action needed.
But this egg that got laid yesterday has renewed my concern. I realise the water retention and this new, strange egg are probably different problems, however it has raised my concern over the health of the flock. I have done some quick reading up on Infectious Bronchitis and I've been appalled by what I've found. My urgent questions are these:
1 - does this look/sound like IB to you? (Would appreciate it if you could kindly qualify your opinion with any research/evidence you may have, yours or otherwise) If not, what else would you suspect?
2 - can this pass from ducks to chickens? (Our chickens and ducks live together)
3 - can it be carried by the male ducks?
4 - I have read that, once infected, a bird is a carrier for life. Does this mean all future hatchings will probably get infected? Is the only permanent solution to cull the entire flock?
Many thanks for any and all advice.
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