by Victoria Redhed Miller
Ducks are fun and easy to raise. We have raised mainly Khaki Campbell ducks for eight years now, keeping them strictly for eggs. At one point we had some Indian Runner ducks and Blue Swedish also, but we’ve pared it down to just the Khaki Campbells now, and just love them.
If you’re looking for a small farm enterprise, duck eggs are a great niche market in just about any part of the country. Professional bakers love them. In addition, most people who are allergic to chicken eggs can tolerate duck eggs (be sure to check with your doctor); this is still the number one reason we get calls asking for duck eggs!
Duck eggs are larger than chicken eggs and sell for much higher prices in most markets, and they also have a longer shelf life due to their strong, thick shell. Ducks are prolific layers, and our ducks continue laying longer in the fall than our chickens do. (We don’t light the coops, as we feel it’s best for the laying birds to take their normal break from laying.) Our ducks generally stop laying between about mid-November and mid-January. Most of ours are now over 5 years old and still laying quite well!
For more on this subject, check out Chickens vs. Ducks: What’s the difference when it comes to eggs?
Table of Contents
Feeding ducks
Our Khaki Campbell ducks are efficient grazers, and like all ducks they love to dabble, especially in wet, muddy areas. If you have a pond they will happily forage there too, eating various aquatic plants, tadpoles, etc. As with chickens, egg production is directly linked to good nutrition, so we feed our ducks an organic grain mash as well as giving them access to ponds and plenty of pasture space. We’ve had best results with the grain mash when it is soaked in water for a while before feeding out; less feed is wasted this way and I believe the ducks digest it more easily.
You probably won’t find a feed formula specifically for ducks. I recommend using a turkey starter formula (or possibly a wild-bird formula) supplemented with rolled oats for young ducks. Once they are 10 or 12 weeks old, they will be nearly full-grown and can do just fine with a regular layer formula (at least 16% protein). If you plan to breed your ducks, it’s helpful to boost the protein intake during breeding season; during the fall molt is another good time to do this, while the birds are growing new feathers.
Housing
With ducks I think it is particularly important that they not be crowded. Ducks drink copious quantities of water, and their poop is correspondingly wet and messy. And plentiful. If you are going to build your own coop, my main piece of advice is to make it easy to clean! Especially in winter, when the ducks will be in the coops for 15 or 16 hours a day, you will need to clean out the coops fairly frequently.
Our main duck coop is 6′ x 3′ by 3′ high. It currently houses 6 ducks, although with a smaller duck like the Khaki Campbell, this coop will comfortably hold 10 or 12. Ducks don’t like stray light in their coops, so if the coop is placed where the headlights of passing cars might shine on the coops, try to minimize how much light can actually get into the coop. Duck coops don’t need roosts, and ducks have short legs, so the coop need not be very tall.
It isn’t necessary to have a pond if you have ducks, although they will love it if you do have one! We have two large ponds, and the ducks do use them, although after a recent eagle attack they don’t seem anxious to go back down there. We have tried a number of different tubs for the ducks to splash in; one of the easiest is simply to use a plastic garbage can lid. Make a slight depression in the ground so it won’t rock, and fill it with water. I’ve seen 3 ducks get in this thing at a time, and they quickly splash all the water out of it, but they have a great time.
Nest boxes (or not)
We have tried various nest box arrangements over the years, starting with the usual recommendations. Ultimately we just took the nest boxes out of the coops and have had much better results! We found that the ducks hardly used the nest boxes at all, except for the one or two who loved to sleep in the box and fill it with poop.
Once we took out the nest boxes, they simply chose one spot (usually close to the door) and laid their eggs there every day. They keep that spot clean and dry, and if there is plenty of bedding, they like to bury their eggs under a layer of it. A key here (see below) is to make sure the ducks have plenty of room in their coop; if they are too crowded, they will likely lay their eggs in different places in the coop, risking breakage or at least very dirty eggs.
Collecting duck eggs
For the most part, ducks lay their eggs overnight; most eggs will be laid by about 8:00 AM. In the shorter days of fall and winter, this makes things easy. Just leave them in their coop until at least 8:00 and then collect the eggs once you’ve let them out.
In the summer it’s a bit trickier, since it’s light long before 8:00 and the ducks will be pestering you to let them out. If the weather is particularly hot you won’t want to keep them confined for too long. I’d suggest letting them out, and then counting the eggs in the nest. If the number seems low, chances are one or more of them will lay an egg somewhere outside before long; keep an eye on them as best you can. Our experience has been that when ducks lay eggs outside the coop, they tend to lay in the same spot every time; we’ve had a few over the years who habitually laid their eggs outdoors, and once we found the nest we just had to check that spot through the day for eggs.
Cleaning duck eggs
Duck eggs are not as easy to clean as chicken eggs. They have a grayish sort of film that has a distinct “farmyard” aroma to it that is frankly unpleasant and should be cleaned off, especially if you are packaging the eggs for sale. (If you do sell the eggs, your local Department of Agriculture will have its own regulations about the cleaning of eggs, so be sure to check with them.) While we use an old soft toothbrush to clean chicken eggs, for duck eggs we’ve found that one of those green kitchen scrubbers works really well. We keep one of these just for cleaning duck eggs; the extra abrasiveness makes it a lot easier to clean those eggs.
Please do not be afraid to remove the “bloom” from your eggs! I’ve had a lot of people argue with me about this over the years, claiming that removing the bloom shortens the shelf life of the eggs. First of all, duck eggs have a stronger, thicker shell than chicken eggs and already have a longer shelf life. Also, if you keep ducks for eggs, presumably those eggs are going to be used (or sold) when they are quite fresh, so clearly shelf life is not an issue. If you are selling eggs wholesale, you probably have to have a license and follow the regulations about cleaning eggs. I have seen plenty of dirty duck eggs at the farmer’s markets and even some co-ops; in my opinion this is unappetizing at best, and unsanitary too.
Bonus!
Ducks love slugs! I swear I haven’t seen a slug anywhere near my garden since our first ducks were about 3 months old. How they eat things like slugs and dabble in muddy water and still produce large quantities of delicious, nutritious eggs, I have no idea. But they do, and we love them for it. Overall our ducks have consistently produced more eggs per week than our chickens, and they are larger, more valuable eggs. Around here, the demand for duck eggs constantly outstrips the supply. So if you’re thinking of a small farm or backyard enterprise, or just want a reliable supply of wonderful eggs for yourself and your family, I highly recommend ducks. They’re smart, entertaining, and low-maintenance too.
If you are wondering about duck care during cold winter months, check out this post that Victoria wrote for us previously. Thinking of getting ducks? Check out What No One Tells You About Raising Ducks.
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Victoria lives on a homestead in Washington State and is the author of Pure Poultry: Living Well with Heritage Chickens, Turkeys and Ducks
and Craft Distilling: Making Liquor Legally at Home.
Maybe a silly question, but how do you keep the ducks from flying away?
Domestic ducks fly about as well as chickens do, and like chickens, they know where they can get a free meal, so they won’t waddle off either.
Can you keep chickens and ducks in the same fenced yard if they have their own coop?
Yes, you can. They usually ignore each other.
Ducks really need a pond or other source of water to play in. The aerator on our pond quit one cold winter day, which means the pond froze over, and the ducks went into the chicken house and completely splashed out all of the chickens’ water within about 15 minutes! It was a horrible icy mess.
FIRST EXCUSE THE LARGE LETTERS MY VISION IS AT PRESENT DIM. OK, ONCE I HAD DUCKS (10), GEESE (2), AND, CHICKENS ( 10) ALL IN TOGETHER. I PROVIDED A VARIETY OF SHELTERS TO SUIT EVERYONE’S NEED IN FENCED 900 SQ. FOOT YARD COMPLETE WITH LARGE TREES FOR SHADE. I EVEN ADDED A PEACOCK ONCE. DISASTER. THAT IS A WHOLE NOTHER. STORY OF FUN DAYS ON THE FARM. ONE OF THE PROBLEMS THAT I HAD WITH THIS MIXED CROWD WAS THAT THE CHICKENS DID NOT SWIM WELL BUT DID NOT HAVE THE SENSE TO STAY OUT OF THE DUCK POND. YES, I KNOW, I COULD HAVE MADE THE DUCKS UNCOMFORTABLE FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHICKENS BUT INSTEAD, I BUILT THE DUCKS A YARD OF THEIR OWN. AND, I NEVER LET THEM OUT WHEN I WAS IRRIGATING. ANOTHER STORY. FARM LIFE 🙂
What if there are wild ducks already in a nearby pond? Will they encourage the domestic ducks to lay eggs in the wild?
Domestic ducks and wild ducks ignore each other. Plus wild ducks are migratory. They don’t stick around long enough to make friends. Plus, if you lock up your ducks overnight, they will have laid their eggs before you let then out in the morning.
Any thoughts about base of their house being hardware cloth for easier clean up?
If you mean that the floor would be hardware cloth, that would be good in terms of how messy they are with their water, but I’m not sure if it would help with the poop. The poop would probably just clog up the openings in the wire.
How long are duck eggs safe outside? My youngest collects the eggs and while he was gone I forgot. It was 3 days. Is that too long?
I wouldn’t eat them raw at that point, but we’ve cooked eggs that were unrefrigerated for longer than that. Unless the temperature was over 95, they should be fine. The closer it is to 100 degrees, the more likely they may have started to incubate, so there might be an embryo in there. It’s safe to eat, just not very palatable.
We got 8 Khaki Campbell’s about 6 weeks ago. How much feed do you give them per duck? We also have a pond and they spend a great deal of time at the water’s edge.
If they are on a pond, they are getting a lot of what they need from that. I’m not sure how much the grain amounts to, but we just keep a pan of it available for them and we refill it daily. They don’t usually finish it off, so they basically can eat as much as they want.
We have baby ducks and they are growing fast. When is the best time to let them wander around outside the pen?
They need to be fully feathered out before they can wander around outside, especially if you have a pond where they can get wet. If they are raised by mama, they get oil from cuddling under her, but if they are raised in a brooder, they have to be producing their own oil to insulate them so they don’t get chilled if they get soaked.
I have two lovely ducks (was3)one is a pecan cross and a good ,no prob layerhowever my runner just lays fart eggs tho she did lay ,with a little help a big,normal egg not long ago.her eggs were always soft shell smallish when she was younger and her sister the same.sister passed a huge egg resulting in prolapse which the vet couldn’t fix.the (two )runner has always been nervy but getting better .she is four and otherwise a happy wee thing with a good life
How odd! I’ve never heard of a chicken or duck that didn’t lay almost all normal eggs. A fart egg or soft shell egg is usually never laid by most. In fact, I’ve only had them laid a few times a year by my 80 chicken hens and never by my 20 duck hens.
Lately my ducks have been laying very soft & thin shelled eggs. They get organic 16% layer feed. Are they possibly getting too old?
Abnormal eggs are usually laid by pullets or older hens in chickens, so I’d assume the same to be true in ducks. Thin-shelled eggs usually indicate a need for more calcium, although our duck eggs are quite hard, and we don’t give our ducks any extra calcium.
I HAD A PEKING HEN WHO CONSISTENTLY LAID EGGS WITH ONLY THE MEMBRANE HOLDING THINGS IN AND SHE HAD ACCESS TO THE SAME FOOD & OYSTER SHELLS AS THE REST OF THE DUCKS.
They are often translucent and very thin I have found several broken (trampled) the insides are normal thick duck eggs whites & yoke. I have 3 khaki Campbell’s and one peking. The 3 older ones have been laying just fine for the 3 years that I’ve had them, until now. The new Peking is laying huge good eggs.
The answer for this in chickens would be to provide them with oyster shells. You could offer that to your ducks and see if they eat it. It’s always possible that there could be something in their environment that’s thrown off their calcium balance.
We were given a single female duck, Iam wondering if she will lay eggs. Will she feel lonely without the flock or produce eggs ?
She will be lonely because birds are flock animals, but that won’t stop her from laying any more than loneliness would stop a mammal from ovulating. However, if she is running around the yard, you may not find the eggs. Also, if she is a few years old, she may lay very little or never.
Hey!
I’m nowhere near getting ducks yet – I live in an apartment! But further down the line I’d like to.
Stupid question – how do you know which eggs can be collected and eaten and which will potentially hatch into a duckling?
Do you have to keep drakes and ducks separate at certain times?
If you don’t have a drake, then none of the eggs will be fertile. If you have at least one drake for every 10 hens or so, then the eggs are usually fertile. You can eat all eggs, regardless of whether or not they are fertile. The drakes and hens can be together 365 days per year. I personally don’t recommend having ducks unless you have a pond. Yes, you can do it without a pond, but ducks make a bloody mess of all water if they don’t have a pond.
There you go – I learned something.
Not the bit about how you only get baby ducks if there is a mommy duck and a daddy duck who love each other very much – I knew that!
So basically it’s just a matter of whether the egg is collected and cooked or left and incubated. Gotcha.
And no, I would only want to keep them once I had a pond and suitable space.
Thanks.
Our duck laid about 25 eggs over the course of a week (she barely left her nest to have quick food run), and then one day appeared to get bored and never went back to her nest. It’s been a month and now she’s back to laying (about 4 eggs a day at last count). Both times she won’t let us near to collect the eggs, but there’s no drake so definitely no potential ducklings. She gets very upset if an egg goes missing, and runs around doing the duck equivalent of screaming. Is it normal for her to lay lots of eggs in one go and then nothing? And how can we collect the eggs without upsetting her?
That is so unusual that I would have said it was impossible. It takes a chicken or duck almost 24 hours to make an egg. If an egg goes through the oviduct too fast, it usually winds up with a very thin shell or sometimes no shell at all or sometimes no yolk. I would seriously think that another duck is putting eggs in the nest also.
If you don’t collect the eggs, they are going to rot and explode. I’d just wear a long-sleeve jacket and gloves and go get the eggs. It’s not unusual for hormonal hens to get upset if you try to take the eggs, but she’ll get over it quickly. You could swap out the real eggs for some plastic easter eggs or golf balls.
Hi! I had three young male buff ducks on my pond, and two of them were stolen and my most shy one was left. I am talking with someone who is selling three female khaki Campbell’s and one drake. I am wondering if it’s going to cause a problem having two drakes?
No, not at all a problem. We’ve always had multiple drakes, ganders, roosters, etc.
Hello! I have inherited 4 ducks and 1 chicken. They are all around 2 years old and grew up together (including the chicken). The hen hangs with the ducks. We are wondering if we should get her a chicken friend or if she is content with the ducks. Thoughts? Thanks!
As the old saying goes, “birds of a feather flock together!” I’m sure your chicken would love to have some other chicken friends. All of our poultry is free range, and they all stick together by species.