Informal Survey: Are your ducks laying eggs with little or no shell?

[tdgill]

Duck breeds: welsh harlequin, blue swedish, buff orp, cayuga
Age: 6 months
Feed: Layer pellets, free choice oyster shell (which I have also added to one of their layer pellets dish) free range on small lot, peas everyday and dandelions hand picked. Lots of wormy goodies with all this rain and I move rocks and stepping stones for them to get all the goodies. Maybe they get too much other stuff and someone isn't eating enough of the layer pellets?

I get one or two soft shell everyday. :-(

 

[ducksinarow]

3 Campbells
I only had 1 soft shell egg last spring. It was the forth egg I collected that day. I feed all flock, occasionally calcium, cup of peas at night, but they free range often. Shells are hard to crack even the old eggs.

 

[Miss Lydia]

5 Muscovy hens egg laying age. never had a soft shell egg, thought I was going to have to get the hammer to crack a few though. Feed Purina Flock Raiser with Oyster shell on the side, free range during the daytime, treats: peas, mealworms[dried] and other goodies.

 

[kuntrygirl]

Quote:
We feed the same thing Miss Lydia.

 

[DUCKGIRL89]

Breed: rouens, and khaki campbells
Age: around 8 to 9 months.
Feed: chicken layer pellets.
Number of eggs per day: 2-3 per day
Number of soft shelled eggs: I only got one, from one of my khaki hens becuz she needed oster shell...

 

[ChickInDelight]

My 2 Mallard hens have been laying like crazy - all perfect green eggs. They are Easter ducks, and they have started with a BANG!

 

[Miss Lydia]

Quote:
We feed the same thing Miss Lydia.

 

[tdgill]

i used to feed Flock Raiser too, before laying age though. I still like the product and feel guilty for not still buying it. When they have it in stock that is.....

but I doubt that this is the reason for my problems...(?)

 

[veronicasmom]

I pekin, 1 runner, and one small mixed breed. Was getting 3 eggs daily thru the summer.
Now I am getting one egg every few days. But also finding one or two soft shelled eggs, one normal size and one tiny misshapen one, always broken.
I think the good egg I am getting is from my runner, not sure though.
They have access to calcium all the time. But they are all (including my drake) in molt.

 

[Amiga]

Thanking everyone again - this is very helpful.

May be that the soft shelled girls do have wonky systems, and the extra running around this year bumps their insides enough to send the egg out before the shell has formed.

As of today, we're getting one or two regular eggs a day, plus one or two with little or no shell. Aside from that, almost all the ducks seem to be in great shape. About half of them are finishing up a molt now, the rest have already molted. Vier molts in stages, it seems. She's replaced her head, neck and wing feathers (about two months ago), but today I noticed the feathers on her back are loose and coming off (very downy little feathers).

Sieben's just always been her own duck. She lays the huge almost spherical eggs, and she dislikes temperatures below 40F, and gets really pooped out in the afternoon but perks up if she lets go of an egg. She's been to the vet, who has tried to help get extra calcium into her. I hope I can come up with something.

This morning I woke up wondering if I could mix up a special high calcium smoothy for her.