Raising Ducks
Basics
Duckling diary
Management
Housing
Eggs
Links/Resources
Movies
and please note:
Duck egg production
During their first year of laying, our seven Khaki
Campbells laid 332 eggs each. That is 47 pounds (21 kilograms) of eggs per duck, in a single year.
When we were debating breeds of ducks,
we read that Campbells typically lay about 300 eggs a year. (The record
laying bird of any breed, any species, was a Campbell duck who laid more
than 365 eggs in a year.) Several sources confirmed this figure, but we
couldn't quite bring ourselves to believe it. It just seemed fantastic.
An egg a day, with only an occasional miss and time off for molting? Surely
these ducks must be pushed to the limit of their genetic capacity.
But we aren't consciously pushing our birds.
As far as I can tell, they're just extremely happy and healthy ducks.
Production over time
The ducks began laying at the end of September 2003, when they were just shy
of 19 weeks old. They did not all begin laying at the same time. We found
that we could tell which ducks were laying first by the visible bulge
in their lower abdomen each evening. By that standard, the first ducks
began laying at seventeen weeks; the last began at about twenty weeks.
As a group, they were laying 5 eggs a day
(or 5 eggs per week each) after four weeks and nearly 7 eggs a day after
six weeks. They maintained that level of production until they were a year old and began molting. They motled gradually during the summer and fall; by winter their production had returned to about 5 eggs per week, although we think one of the seven ducks is no longer laying at all.
This table shows our egg production as the ducks reached maturity during their first fall. I have added a complete table of egg production through the first twenty months.
Early egg production (18-28 weeks)
| Age (weeks) | Eggs/week/duck | Mean weight (oz.) |
|---|---|---|
| 18 |
1.5 |
1.7 |
|
19 |
2.0 |
1.7 |
| 20 |
3.3 |
1.8 |
|
21 |
4.1 |
1.8 |
| 22 |
4.7 |
1.9 |
|
23 |
5.3 |
2.0 |
| 24 |
6.3 |
2.0 |
|
25 |
7.0 |
2.1 |
| 26 |
6.9 |
2.1 |
|
27 |
6.9 |
2.2 |
| 28+ |
6.9 |
2.3 |
Daylight and egg production
Typically, ducks lay more eggs in summer when the days are longer and
fewer in the winter when days are shorter. To maximize production, some
people provide artificial lighting in the evenings during the winter.
(Artificial light is, of course, standard practice for industrial egg
production.) But increasing short-term production can shorten the birds'
productive lives, and we saw no reason to do that. The whole point of
raising ducks, after all, was to get away from industrial methods of agriculture.
Now, we do keep a 15-watt nightlight on
all night for our ducks, to keep them calm and deter predators. Fifteen
watts is not supposed to be sufficient light to increase their egg production,
but it may be a factor.
Our only real evidence is mixed. When a
December ice storm knocked out our power for nine days, their production
dropped from 7 eggs a day to 6. But for the first seven of those nine
days, we had a power line down across our backyard, and the ducks had
to stay in their nightpen — which they were not happy about;
they were noticeably agitated. Once we got the power line back up and
they went back to their routine, their production went back to normal
— even though we still didn't have power. So we don't know how much
of the production drop was due to the loss of the nightlight and how much
was due to the altered routine.
Even if the light is a factor, though,
it isn't much of a factor — at most one egg per week per duck, and
probably less. My guess is that the nightlight gives us a half an egg
per duck per week, which should not be enough to put a long-term strain
on them. When you're producing a fifth of your weight in eggs every week,
an extra ounce isn't going to make much of a difference!
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