tracking muskovy eggs

[Melina]

Has anyone figuired out how to keep free range backyard muscovy ducks without having to go on an egg/duck hunt every day? I'm keeping 9 muskovys mostly for the eggs. 7 females and 2 males. Right now I lock them in their coop at night and let them out in the morning, Some females lay their eggs on a nest inside the coop but I've noticed that others hold their eggs untill I let them out so I started to keep them in the cage later and later. But now they won't even lay at all in the nest and I feel bad keeping them in there for too long. Specially because I don't know who is laying where. So spend a lot of my day waiting to see where they go hide their eggs and when I'm not looking they get lost and then I spend a long time looking for them. A few times I have found clusters of 3 or 4 eggs. But this is getting old and I would really like to be able to let them out all the time and be able to get my precious eggs. Does anyone have any suggestions? is there any kind of duck tracking device out there that I don't know about?

 

[Amiga]

Melina, that sounds like an adventure that no one would enjoy

@Going Quackers has Muscovies that range around her place, @Miss Lydia also keeps Muscovies - there are many Muscovy people here. Wish I could offer a brilliant suggestion. Because of where we are, my Runners and Buffs are either in the night pen, with me, or in the Day Pen, and very very few eggs get lost.

 

[Melina]

Thank you amiga. It was fun at the begining, I only had two and I could see where there were going. But now i have more and they are getting more and more clever... I don't want to keep them locked all the time. I have the luxury to live in Hawaii where there are no predators so they can be out all day and night if I wanted to. I also thought about fencing in a larger area but this is my last resource. Thanks again!

 

[Amiga]

There is a thread about showing off Muscovies - I would try posting on that.

 

[quackingdom]

@Melina

My Muscovies sometimes do the same thing, holding their eggs until we let them out of their pen (no matter how late we let them out). Then they rush for a storage trailer nearby and lay under it. So we know WHERE they are laying, but the trailer is so low and close to the ground that we can't reach the eggs! We've lost a lot of eggs that way. Sometimes they find new places to lay, but we usually discover those.

What helps the most is trying to keep the nests (the ones you want them to lay in) nice and enticing. They like nests that...

1. Do not have a wire floor.
2. Are VERY private (my Muscovies' favorite nest right now is a long tunnel inside a haystack, so long and dark that it's hard to see the eggs at the end)
3. Their eggs are not stolen from. We always leave one egg in the nest (ducks can't count) so they don't decide that the egg thief found their nest ;-) Of course we rotate which eggs stays in the nest so it doesn't rot.

I had some Muscovies that would not lay unless it was a DIRT floor. They didn't accept wire, wood, or even hay on top of wire or wood. They decided it had to have dirt with hay on top, or else they would hide their eggs. They were much pickier than my current girls, though they weren't as sneaky about hiding eggs as my current ones.

And no matter how good my nests are, there's always one sneaky girl who hides her eggs.

~Hannah

 

[DucksAndGardens]

Maybe you could let them out but herd them into a specific fenced off area for an hour or so after letting them out of their regular pen. Set up an area with a dog house or some little nesting boxes and herd them there and then see if they will lay their eggs. Then you could let them go wandering wherever once the eggs are laid. I don't raise muscovys though, I'm just brainstorming.

 

[Melina]

Thank you Hannah this is helpful. I do steal my girl's eggs and feel bad about it every time. But I have some fake ceramic eggs that look just like the real thing that I live in their nest instead.

Just curious, what do you do when your girls go broody? do you let them sit or do you take them out?

 

[Melina]

@DucksAndGardens, yes fencing a large area is a long term plan that i think may work well. But I'm not able to do that just yet so I'm looking for a more inmediate solution.

Iappreciate everyones comments. thank you very much!

 

[quackingdom]

You're welcome!

When they're broody, I usually only let them stay broody if I want them to hatch the eggs. If I don't, then I'll normally take them out and lock them out. It's kind of hard to do, because their hormones make them want to go back to their nest, but after a few days they'll forget about it and go back to laying.

You could just let them stay broody until they give up (just take the eggs out so they don't hatch), but they don't lay while they're broody. I just break them up (by locking them out of the nest) so they can start laying again. I don't like missing a week's worth of eggs, or however long it takes for them to stop.

~Hannah