A few weeks ago, we picked up out last shipment of poultry birds for the year. 50 laying ducks called Kaki Campbells.
Ducks typically begin laying eggs at 4 months. They roughly lay one egg a day during the spring and early summer months and then taper off in later summer, fall and winter. They lay well for about 8 years. The 50ish ducks we currently have are about 4 years old.
Duck eggs are about 50% larger than chicken eggs. If you want to learn more about the difference between chicken & duck eggs, check out an older blog HERE.
When the ducks arrived, we put them into large troughs like we have been doing with the baby chickens all summer. Within 24 hours of arriving, we moved them from the troughs to the floor in the barn. Ducks love to play in the water, so they were making a mess in their drinking water, and it needed to be replaced multiple times a day. We moved them to the floor in one of the barn stalls, and they were able to start drinking out of the watering nipple system immediately. Shortly after that, Greg made more automatic feeders that hold over 500 lbs of feed, so ducklings and other birds in the barn are very low maintenance. Ducks do poop a lot, and it really smells, so fresh layers of straw need to be added every week or two.
These ducks will be in the barn for about 18 weeks until they are off starter and developer feed. They will then go outside to meet the other ducks and move into their permanent home. Each time birds graduate and move out of their assigned stalls, the stalls are cleaned out and allowed to dry in preparation for future baby birds.
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