Broody Ducks

Any experienced waterfowl owner has seen the signs of their females going broody. To new owners, however, it can be alarming. We regularly receive frantic phone calls saying that their females have started behaving strangely and that they do not know what to do.

Broodiness is basically a biological clock that tells a female bird that it is time to sit on her eggs full time. When she lays eggs, she is not broody as she does not sit continuously on the eggs. She merely lays her eggs in the nest and then leaves. Once she has a full next of eggs, she will start sitting on the eggs to hatch them. Only in extreme instances will a female become broody without eggs in the nest. During this time she leaves her nest once a day to eat, drink, and do her business. As it is her instinct to protect her eggs, she will become territorial and grumpy. This will continue until the eggs hatch.

Most birds that become broody take care of themselves while on the nest, only leaving once or twice a day to eat and bathe. As such, they are more susceptible to predators, mites, ants, and other bugs and pests. In extreme cases of those that continue to sit on eggs that will not hatch they run the risk of malnutrition, dehydration, and even death.

If you think your bird will go broody, it is important to encourage her to nest in a safe place. This can be done by providing nesting boxes in advance. Waterfowl have a tendency of choosing a spot for their nest and sticking to it even if the nest is moved. (We had a customer call us once at her wits end. Her goose had built a nest in the middle of a high traffic walkway and was plugging up a pipe. We told her to move the nest since she did not want to destroy it, but when she did the goose rebuilt the nest in the exact same place as before!) Chris and Mike Ashton suggest in ‘The Domestic Duck’ to leave the bird alone while she is sitting and to separate her from any males. To help with exercise, Dave Holderread in ‘Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks’ suggests placing food and water just out of reach in order to entice her to leave the nest in order to take care of her needs. We suggest switching from a layer feed to a grower feed while she is broody. In the situation that a bird goes broody, but there is no possible way for the eggs to hatch (no males in the flock), it is possible to slip fertile eggs under her or even ducklings/goslings and trick her into thinking the eggs have hatched.

There are some instances in which you do not want your bird to remain broody such as when they go broody without eggs or you rely on her for egg production. Once they start sitting, they stop laying. The best way we find to stop brooding is to take away any eggs and destroy the nest. To discourage her from attempting to make another nest, make sure there are no materials available to her to make a nest. In large-scale turkey farms they have small pens in the laying buildings that have cement or wire floors in which they put their broody hens. After they appear to have lost their broody instinct and no longer want to sit, which can take about 3-4 days, they are returned to the rest of the flock.

We find there are some breeds that are broodier than others. Sebastapol geese are the worst of the bunch on our farm, followed by the African and Buff. On the duck side, the Cayuga seem to be the broodiest followed by the Rouen. On the opposite end, we do not really know who is less broody out of our geese, but our Runner are the least likely ducks to be broody.

A bird going broody is perfectly natural and some breeds can be more broody than others. There are steps you can take to help them through it or to stop it. Hopefully these guides will help you with your broody birds.

Khaki Campbell

The Khaki Campbell was first bred in the late 1800s by Adele Campbell in Gloucestershire, England. She had crossed her Fawn and White Indian Runners with Rouens in order to make a breed with exceptional egg laying abilities with larger bodies. Wanting the then popular buff color, she tried to breed her original Campbells with Penciled Runners. She did not get the buff color she wanted, but the color she got was similar to the khaki color used in British army uniforms so the ducks became Khaki Campbells.

The newly dubbed Khaki Campbell was introduced to the public in 1898 and made its way to the United States in 1929 thanks in part to Perry Fish of Syracuse, New York. They became a part of the American Standard of Perfection in 1941, despite the fact their numbers had languished for several years. This changed in the 1970’s when the Khaki Campbell population increased due to social movements to return to the land and duck egg demand increased due to Vietnamese immigrants after the Vietnam War.

 

The Khaki Campbell is a light weight bird, around 3½ to 4½ pounds, and a very prolific layer. In 1920 Aalt Jansen from the Netherlands started breeding Khaki Campbel
l imported from England. With careful breeding and testing, Jansen was able to produce a strain that averaged 335 to 340 eggs per duck per laying year. With a flock of 50,000 that is 16.75 million eggs per year which was extraordinary at the time. The Jansen flock was eventually picked up by the Kortlang family in England. John Metzer has visited the Kortlang farm and our own Khaki Campbells have some Kortlang blood in them.

Jansen Farms Letter Header April 15, 1978

Breed	Temperament	Weight	Egg Production	Mothering	Bluish Eggs	Egg Size
Khaki Campbell	Nervous	3.5 - 4.5 pounds	165-240/year	Good	<5%	75-85 grams
Fertility	APA Class	Foraging Ability	Conservation Status	Our Show Quality	Flying Ability	Origin
87%	Light	Very Good	Watch	Fairly Good	Maybe	England

Our Pekin Duck Breeding Program

Originally posted by John Metzer on Mon, Feb 21, 2011 @ 09:57 AM 

 All my Pekin breeding stock comes from Grimaud Freres, a French poultry breeding company. I have many customers that grow Pekin ducklings year round - some purchase ducklings weekly, others every other week, and others monthly. To supply these ducklings, I import Pekin breeding stock twice year.

Two sets of eggs are brought in for these Pekin breeders: the male line and female line eggs. Of course males and females hatch from both sets of eggs. But it is the females from the female line and males from the male line that are kept for my breeders. The remaining birds, called off-sex, are sold as commercial ducklings (to be grown for meat). With this type of breeding program, the selection emphasis on the female line is for excellent egg production and high fertility. The male line is bred for larger size, fast growth, and excellent feed conversion. When you cross a male from the male line with a female from the female line, you produce a large number of ducklings that grow quickly with good feed conversion. My Grimaud Hybrid is called the Star 53 by Grimaud Freres.

I was visited recently by Laurent Bomard, Grimaud's Western Hemisphere representative 

(on the left in the picture).

Laurent explained that Grimaud's genetic program is now putting a much stronger emphasis on feed conversion. Feed conversion is expressed as a ratio: the pounds of feed it takes to produce one pound of duck. A feed conversion of 2.00 (or 2.00:1) means it takes two pounds of feed to produce one pound of live duck – a seven pound duck would have eaten 14 pounds of feed. Of course the desire is to reduce this number. With increasing feed costs, the feed efficiency of commercially grown poultry is critical.

Muscovy ducks and individual feeding stations behind them.

Grimaud has developed equipment to measure the feed conversion of each individual duck in a flock. With this information, they can select the better converting ducks for breeding stock. Each duck has a chip implanted in its neck (much the same as is done with horses and dogs for identification purposes). Each feeder can only be used by one duck at a time. When the duck reaches for feed, the scale automatically weighs the feed. When the duck leaves, the scale again weighs the feed and records the difference as feed eaten by that particular duck. The advantage of this system is each duck does not need to be penned separately to record the feed consumption – they can be grown in a flock.

The back side of the feed hoppers.  Notice the Muscovy on the other side of the short wall.

For large operations, feed conversion is critical. Assume you grow 10,000 ducks a week, their feed conversion is 2.4:1, you process them at 7 pounds live weight and feed costs you an average of $340 a ton. With this scenario, you will use 4368 tons of feed, costing $1,485,120 in a year. Now let us assume you grow our Grimaud Hybrid ducks and achieve a feed conversion to 2.3:1. With everything else constant, you have just saved 182 tons, or $61,880 dollars a year. Even if you are only growing 100 ducks a week, you will save $618 a year.
Grimaud started with Muscovy ducks and became the world's leader in Muscovy breeding (France consumes much more Muscovy than Pekin duck meat). They then turned to Pekins, rabbits, pigeons, geese and guineas. Our French Toulouse geese are of Grimaud breeding as are our Pearl Guineas.

The other major, international breeder of Pekin ducks is Cherry Valley of England.  Both companies sell breeding stock internationally.  I visited Cherry Valley in 2008 when I was in Europe visiting hatcheries and researching which new incubators to get for our hatchery.  Both companies are excellent Pekin breeder companies.

Is anyone doing any selection on their ducks or geese for characterisitics other than size or appearance?