A mother duck lays a single egg per day. Maybe you just have two females.
I found some eggs
- Thread starter jsdspif
- Start date
Simple question: Do they quack or do they rasp? Drakes rasp, duck mostly quack, mine also make all kinds of weird noises but they don't rasp.
Have a look at this video and you will hear the difference:
Have a look at this video and you will hear the difference:
Congrats on your eggs!
If both of your ducks make the same noises, they are probably both girls.
Also with the number of eggs you have gotten in the number of days, they are probably both girls. Female ducks will lay one egg a day through the summer. It is normal to skip a day sometimes. In fall and winter they may lay less frequently, or even stop laying all together. This is normal too, and nothing to worry about. Nature somehow taught generations of birds that having babies in the winter isn't a good thing for survival rates.
Ducks often will lay in the same spot, so now you know where to look for eggs daily. Also ducks seem to love to cover up their eggs with whatever bedding is there, so as you have learned, you might need to dig around a little. I agree that if you find an egg and you aren't really sure how long it has been there, it may be best not to eat it. At room temperature (approximately 70 degrees F) you can safely store fresh collected unwashed eggs for quite a long time on your kitchen counter, however if the temperature outside is really hot and an egg sat for a week or more it may not be best to eat it, conversely, if it is really cold and the egg might have frozen there will often be small cracks in the shell that allow bacteria in, so it's not a great idea to eat those either.
There are lots of discussions on BYC about collecting and storing eggs for human consumption. Ducks have notoriously dirty eggs, especially after a day of rain and making mud puddles in their runs. I don't often feel that I need to wash my chicken eggs, but almost ALWAYS feel like I need to wash my duck eggs. Once an egg has been washed, it needs to either be cooked and eaten right away, or stored in the fridge. Washing eggs it is recommended by the USDA to use water that is 20 degrees F hotter than the egg. I don't measure water temp, but do make a point to use hot water. Do not wash with cold water. I just rinse them and wipe off any mud/poop/stuck on bedding and then put them in a carton in the fridge. Writing a date on them, like you mentioned, is good practice, or I rotate them and always put the newest eggs on the bottom shelf and the oldest eggs that I should eat first on the top shelf. Find a system that works for you. Eggs can keep for weeks on the counter unwashed or washed and refrigerated.
You will only be able to hatch ducklings if you do indeed have one male and one female. Since your ducks are young, they probably aren't ready yet and the eggs may not all be fertile yet. I would wait until next spring. This gives you time to read up on hatching and make sure you are set up and ready and that your ducks are ready. You will need to decide things like if you want to invest in an incubator or try to get your duck to be a natural mama. You will also need to make plans for any ducklings that hatch that you may not be able to keep. Until then, enjoy your omelettes and quiches and scrambles.
There is good reading on ducks in the following places on BYC:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/category/ducks.30/
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/ducks-sticky-topics-index.256233/
If both of your ducks make the same noises, they are probably both girls.
Also with the number of eggs you have gotten in the number of days, they are probably both girls. Female ducks will lay one egg a day through the summer. It is normal to skip a day sometimes. In fall and winter they may lay less frequently, or even stop laying all together. This is normal too, and nothing to worry about. Nature somehow taught generations of birds that having babies in the winter isn't a good thing for survival rates.
Ducks often will lay in the same spot, so now you know where to look for eggs daily. Also ducks seem to love to cover up their eggs with whatever bedding is there, so as you have learned, you might need to dig around a little. I agree that if you find an egg and you aren't really sure how long it has been there, it may be best not to eat it. At room temperature (approximately 70 degrees F) you can safely store fresh collected unwashed eggs for quite a long time on your kitchen counter, however if the temperature outside is really hot and an egg sat for a week or more it may not be best to eat it, conversely, if it is really cold and the egg might have frozen there will often be small cracks in the shell that allow bacteria in, so it's not a great idea to eat those either.
There are lots of discussions on BYC about collecting and storing eggs for human consumption. Ducks have notoriously dirty eggs, especially after a day of rain and making mud puddles in their runs. I don't often feel that I need to wash my chicken eggs, but almost ALWAYS feel like I need to wash my duck eggs. Once an egg has been washed, it needs to either be cooked and eaten right away, or stored in the fridge. Washing eggs it is recommended by the USDA to use water that is 20 degrees F hotter than the egg. I don't measure water temp, but do make a point to use hot water. Do not wash with cold water. I just rinse them and wipe off any mud/poop/stuck on bedding and then put them in a carton in the fridge. Writing a date on them, like you mentioned, is good practice, or I rotate them and always put the newest eggs on the bottom shelf and the oldest eggs that I should eat first on the top shelf. Find a system that works for you. Eggs can keep for weeks on the counter unwashed or washed and refrigerated.
You will only be able to hatch ducklings if you do indeed have one male and one female. Since your ducks are young, they probably aren't ready yet and the eggs may not all be fertile yet. I would wait until next spring. This gives you time to read up on hatching and make sure you are set up and ready and that your ducks are ready. You will need to decide things like if you want to invest in an incubator or try to get your duck to be a natural mama. You will also need to make plans for any ducklings that hatch that you may not be able to keep. Until then, enjoy your omelettes and quiches and scrambles.
There is good reading on ducks in the following places on BYC:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/category/ducks.30/
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/ducks-sticky-topics-index.256233/
- Thread starter
- #14
there's no picking mine up. My smart alleck (sp?) friend gave me a hard time when I told him you can't just pick them up and I told him if you can just pick one up I'll give you $20. He tried for about 15 minutes and gave up. They will eat out of my hand but if I attempt any form of contact they take off. At least one has a very loud quack because I hear at least one quacking every now and then and it is LOUD like I think you can probably hear it a half mile away. I just don't know if one or both are quacking that loud. I looked pretty good for the eggs this morning and after lunch I'm going to look again real good just to make sure I didn't leave any in there. During the day they never go back in their house, they hang out alot right at the pig house and I swear again a couple days ago they were in the pig house with the pig. Sometimes they sit under the duck house and they walk around in the yard, so they're not going to lay any eggs during the day in their house. I think one duck layed 3 eggs overnight because all 3 were right together and they were covered up. It just doesn't seem like the one duck would move and then the other duck would go to the exact same spot and then cover the eggs,but maybe that's what happened and I missed one egg from the day before. But I don't know anything about ducks so maybe that's what happened.
- Thread starter
- #15
It really is virtually impossible for one duck to lay 3 eggs over night because it takes about 26 hours for an egg to form and they only form one at a time. It is much more likely that both ducks laid in the same spot and covered them up. Once a spot is deemed a safe laying spot in the eyes of a duck, often they will all lay there, day after day. I have 5 laying females, but generally find eggs clustered and covered in only one or two nest spots total. Ducks most often lay their eggs in the morning, so if you don't find any by 10:00am or so you probably won't have any more for the day.
Also I know what you mean about hearing a loud quack and not knowing who it came from or if it's both of them! It took me weeks to figure out who was the quacking girl and who wasn't. Catching a duck that doesn't want to be caught is near impossible. Also, in my experience, they are frustratingly quiet once you actually catch them 
- Thread starter
- #18
I just went thru their area again REALLY good (I think) and found another egg so for thur,fri,sat,sun and monday that would be 7 eggs total so between 2 ducks I guess they are both female. If that's the case I guess bill color doesn't have anything to do with it. Of the 4 eggs I've saved I just tried the floating method and all of them just laid flat in the bottom of the bowland I was trying to get them to do something but they just sunk to the bottom and laid flat. So I went ahead and washed them really good and put them in the fridge. I have an event I'm going to Thrusday night so just to be safe I'm not going to eat any of them until after my event, just in case I have some sort of reaction. I guess when I check for eggs from hear on out I need to really do some looking. The egg I found was in the same spot as the other 3 maybe a few inches away.
Can someone chime in on the oyster shell calcium, do I just put some in their food and if they want it they'll eat it?
Can someone chime in on the oyster shell calcium, do I just put some in their food and if they want it they'll eat it?
With the oyster shell, just put a small bowl out, do not mix it with their food. They will eat it if/when they need it. Also any time you use an egg, you can save the shells and feed them back to your girls. I just keep a small bowl next to the stove and any time I cook an egg the shell goes in the bowl, when the bowl is full the girls get it.
- Thread starter
- #20
OK, I think I'm figuring it out. This morning there were 2 eggs and I'm pretty sure I had all of them out of there from the day/s before so that would mean my 2 ducks are female(I guess). I guess that means the different bill colors don't mean anything. I did notice that when I'm around the one still has loud quacks and the other one does kind of a hiccup sound, but when I'm not around maybe it quacks real loud also. At least that's what I think at this point. These 2 eggs were also found in the same spot,right in the corner of their area inside the duck house and nestled right together.
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