Spooked ducks?

[lemoniee]

two of my khakis have recently (in the past month) started laying an egg a day, then last week we only had one egg out of two laid then over the weekend we havent had any.....do they stop laying when they get cold in the winter like chickens or do you think something is spooking them at laying time? btw they lay before i let them out in the morning, they share a box with 1 aylesbury (female), 1 mallard (female) one chicken (she prefers to snuggle up with the ducks!) and we think that one of the khakis may be a male but it looks the same at the females as its trying to mate with them!
any info welcome )

 

[Dances with Ducks]

Ducks laying is affected by the amount of daylight, although stressers like cold and illness can affect them. Occasionally there are pests like snakes or rats that will steal eggs, but yours are most likely taking a bit of a winter "lay-off".
My experience is they can keep normal laying even though spooked. I had a raccoon get into our duckhouse in the middle of the night last spring. Lot's of loud thumping woke me up. I ran up to the duckhouse just as the raccoon was leaving and saw it was carrying two eggs. That certainly would have given them as major spooking but the hens kept laying as normal. And I got a lock on the door to the duckhouse!

 

[lemoniee]

Hi DANCES WITH DUCKS,

thanks for the reply, I live in the UK so the only real "pests" we get are foxes, mice and rats havent had any snakes or racoons thou it would be cool to see a racoon! im pretty new to this duck keeping thing so still on the long learning curve with them! ill keep an eye on them and have started a spreadsheet type docu to log how many eggs i get on a daily basis, I mainly made it so i could see how much we were collecting and what money was going in and out to see if we were actu making any £'s!

 

[nettie]

female ducks will also mount each other as a means of establishing and enforcing the pecking order. you probably have two females based on color, but one just likes to be in charge... don't worry, that's normal

 

[lemoniee]

Hi NETTIE,

oooooh.......! that explains a lot then about their recent behaviour!! one of them did trample on the other khaki to get to the paddling pool and the one who was getting trampled on just lay their whilst the other one used it as a step to get higher up!! lol!