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

Golden 300 Hybrid and White Layer Ducks

Golden 300 Hybrid ducks

The Golden 300 Hybrid was developed by us in 1996 in order to meet customer demand for ducks that produce a high volume of eggs but are calmer than the Khaki Campbell. Several years after that the White Layer was developed as customers wanted a duck that had a lighter colored embryo for balut purposes.

White Layer ducks

The Golden 300 and the White Layer are our top egg layers, capable of laying 230 eggs in 40 weeks of production or 290 eggs if they lay for a full year. The only difference we have found between these two strains is the White Layer lays about 1-2% blue/green eggs and the Golden 300 lays about 5% of blue/green eggs. Otherwise they are identical in terms of egg production, egg size, shell strength, etc.

We crossed different breeds of ducks together to make the Golden 300, the breeds of which are a secret! Since the Golden 300 and White Layer are composed of different breeds, they have quite a bit of hybrid vigor and typically have less mortality and live longer than most other breeds. Their eggs are not as large as a Pekin but they produce many more and … produce much less manure!

Male Golden 300 Hybrid ducklings

As ducklings, the sex of the Golden 300 can be determined by their down color. Female ducklings are shades of brown including light brown, chocolate brown, and combinations of brown and yellow, while males are shades of black ranging from stark black to different patterns of black and yellow. As adults, the female can range in color from a light brown to a dark brown with patches of white. Adult males have a much darker plumage ranging in color from all black to black with a white chest to almost a male Rouen appearance. The White Layer, on the other hand, has to be vent sexed as both male and female are yellow as ducklings and white as adults.

If you produce babies from our Golden 300 they will not retain these characteristics of females being brown and males being black. You will hatch all colors, including white, with no relationship between the color and the sex. The White Layer, however, breeds true, meaning the White Layers will produce more white ducks.

Typically they also have great temperaments making them good as pets. We have had some customers, however, that tell us their White Layers and Golden 300 are very nervous and we have had other customers tell us their birds are calm. This is puzzling to us as the genetics does not change. So what causes this wide swings in temperament?

Female Golden 300 Hybrid ducklings

I phoned Dave Holderread, waterfowl breeder and author, and he also agreed that some birds can be nervous and others calm from the same breed. His only guess is that there is a period in their early lives where they are very susceptible to and impressionable by fear. They are scared by a dog, or they are caught and handled by a person, or light movements at night scare them and they are not only terrified but are nervous from that point on.

Can we tell you when that susceptible period is? No. Can we tell you when that period ends? No. All we can say is to allow them to have plenty of room to move away from you in their pen (if they are running or flapping you are moving too close or too fast), warn them you are coming (rattle your keys, whistle, sing, knock on the door or simply talk to them as you approach) and do not overcrowd them. You can always give your birds treats from the very beginning but you cannot count on the treats to totally overcome a traumatic event that makes them overly nervous.

People ask how much egg production will drop in the second generation if our Golden 300 or White Layers are used as breeders. We do not know for sure but our guess is the progeny will lay 5-8% fewer eggs than the birds you purchased from us. We are also asked how much production drops in their second and third years of production. The rule of thumb is a drop of about 8-10% per year.

White Layer duckling

You cannot find a better egg laying duck than the Golden 300 or White Layer. Whether you just want a few ducks for your own family’s needs or you want a commercial flock to sell eggs to farmers markets, bakeries and restaurants, the Golden 300 and White Layer are the ducks for you.

Breed	Temperament	Weight	Egg Production	Mothering	Bluish Eggs	Egg Size
Golden 300 Hybrid	Calm	4.5-5.75 pounds	200-290/year	Fair	5%	75-90 grams
Fertility	APA Class	Foraging Ability	Conservation Status	Our Show Quality	Flying Ability	Origin
93%	NA	Good	No Rank	Not Shown	None	Metzer Farms

Breed	Temperament	Weight	Egg Production	Mothering	Bluish Eggs	Egg Size
White Layer	Calm	4.5-5.75pounds	200-290/year	Fair	1-2%	75-90 grams
Fertility	APA Class	Foraging Ability	Conservation Status	Our Show Quality	Flying Ability	Origin
93%	NA	Good	No Rank	Not for Exhibition	None	Metzer Farms

Pekin Ducks

Pekin Ducklings

The Pekin duck has a long history with records in China going as far back as the 1300s. It was introduced to Great Britain in 1872 and then the United State in 1873. It has since taken over the US market as the go-to commercial meat duck.

The Pekin was bred for its meat, but can be considered a very good egg layer, too. Averaging 8 to 12 pounds in weight, it can lay 150 to 200 eggs per year, making it a great multi-purpose duck.

They are typically processed at six to seven weeks of age with its breast filet being about 21% of the carcass. As such, it has become a very popular commercial duck with a fast growth time and excellent feed conversion (only 2.4 pounds of feed per pound of live body weight gain). In culinary circles, it is the main ingredient for roasted Peking duck.

Female and male Pekin

The dinner table is not the only place the Pekin has become famous. The Aflac duck is a Pekin which originally came from our farm and the
was also the inspiration behind Donald Duck.

We have two names for our Pekin: the Pekin and Grimaud Hybrid Pekin. The Pekin and the Grimaud Hybrid Pekin are the exact same bird, exact same price, just under different names. We did this because some people know what a Pekin is, but not a Grimaud Hybrid, while others may want the Grimaud Hybrid specifically.

The Grimaud Hybrid is named as such because we purchase day-old breeders from Frimaud Freres in France every four months. It is called a hybrid since the Grimaud Hybrid is produced by crossing two strains of Pekin, one strain bred for high meat production and one strain bred for high egg production. By crossing females from the egg laying strain with the males from the meat production strain, you hatch a lot of ducklings that can be grown for meat.

Outside of the commercial market, advertisement, and entertainment industries, the Pekin is a very popular duck among kids and 4-H groups. It does well as a meat class bird at the county fair and is an amazing addition for any backyard hobbyist.

Breed	Temperament	Weight	Egg Production	Mothering	Bluish Eggs	Egg Size
Pekin	Calm	8-12.25 pounds	150-200/year	Poor	<2%	90-100 grams
Fertility	APA Class	Foraging Ability	Conservation Status	Our Show Quality	Flying Ability	Origin
89%	Heavy	Fair	Abundant	Meat Class Only	None	China

Information from our Duck Comparison Table

Why Has My Duck Stopped Laying Eggs?

Around mid Autumn we get a lot of questions on egg laying. Many duck owners do not know why their ducks have slowed down or stopped laying all together. The simple answer is that ducks are similar to chickens as laying is heaviest during the spring into summer and starts to decline or even stop during the fall and winter.

Keep in mind that this is for ducks not raised under artificial lighting. Ducks need at least 17 hours of light in order to continuously lay year-round. Without it production drops. If you would like to learn more about ducks under artificial lighting, please read.

Breed and environment are the two main factors when it comes to a duck laying eggs. Some breeds naturally lay more eggs than others. They also require a relatively stress-free environment and adequate day length.

Different breeds can lay a different number of eggs. A Khaki Campbell lays a lot of eggs throughout the year and is even likely to lay year-round. On the other hand, a Mallard does not lay as many eggs and is likely to slow or stop laying come fall and winter.

Stress affects how a duck lays. If a duck is stressed, it will not lay as well. Stress can come from anything such as predators, loud noises, or a change in their environment such as a new feed, animal or person.

Day length is a major factor in how a duck lays as the days start to get shorter in the fall. The longer the day, the longer ducks will lay while shorter days can stop them from laying. This affect is most obviously seen in Northern states that have a drastic difference between their longest and shortest day. In Southern states, however, this change is not as obvious as the time gap between their longest and shortest day is minimal. For example, a duck could lay longer in Florida than the same duck would lay in Alaska.

Bottom line is to not panic when your ducks stop or slow down in laying eggs. Ducks naturally decline in laying as the days get shorter. How much and for how long depends on the breed and their environment. Stress can cause issues with laying and day length affects how long the duck lays.

If you would like to see what kind of duck would be best for egg laying for your needs, we encourage you to visit our website and look at our Duck Breed Comparison chart.

Can You Move Laying Ducks During Egg Production?

If you move ducks that are laying eggs into a different pen, will it adversely affect their egg production?  If you had asked me this question three weeks ago, I would have said "Absolutely! Yes, egg production will drop dramatically!".  Well, I would have been wrong.

In late fall we have to clean a lot of our buildings in preparation for next year's duck breeders.  Normally we move all the breeders from a building to our sell pen and start cleaning out one years worth of manure and bedding.  Our Khaki Campbells were still laying fairly well in a building that was scheduled to be cleaned.  My breeder manager, Guillermo, decided to move them into an empty pen in another building so we could get another two to three weeks worth of eggs from them before that building had to be cleaned, too. 

If he had asked me prior to the move, I would have said "It won't work, but go ahead and try if you want.  They will stop laying within a couple days of their move."  I encourage employees to try new things but I knew how this was going to work out.
          

The ducks were walked into a trailer and driven to their new pen, about 80 yards away.  The construction of the buildings is exactly the same, though their new pen was a mirror copy of their first pen (for the new pen the water was on the west side and nest boxes on the east side instead of east and west in the older pen).  In addition, they have new neighbors on both sides of their new pen.  Now, look at the egg production of that Khaki Campbell flock.
                  Eggs
Nov.  15       86
          16       90
          17       97
          18      103
          19       92
          20       99
          21       98  The ducks were moved this day after their eggs were collected.
          22     102
          23     107
          24     100
          25     110

You can see they have not gone down in egg production!  The move was a stress but there were many things in common between the old pen and new pen: same feed, same feeders, same nipple waterers, same bedding, same lights, and same light schedule.  They are a bit more nervous but otherwise have taken well to their new pen.

I still do not recommend moving breeders while they are in production - especially if they are early in production and you are getting more eggs each day - but I have learned you can move older flocks if you have a real reason to do so and the new pen is very similar to the old pen.

See - you can teach an old duck farmer new tricks!

Using Lights to Maximize Duck Egg Production - Part Two

Originally posted by John Metzer on Thu, Nov 18, 2010 @ 01:41 PM

In last week's blog, we talked about how long the day length should be to maximize duck egg production. Now I want to go over the types of lights to use, the use of time clocks and how geese are completely different than other poultry in terms of light stimulation.

The choice of bulb depends on how many birds you have to light. If you have a small flock, a single 100 watt incandescent bulb is sufficient. Fluorescent bulbs are more efficient than incandescent. The most efficient, which most commercial poultry operations use, are high pressure sodium lights. This is what we use. They are often used as street lights and give off an orange colored light.

A high pressure sodium light in our duck breeder building.

Birds are stimulated reproductively by the orange/red spectrum in light. Incandescent and sodium lights have plenty of these colors. If you have a choice with your fluorescent bulbs, try to get the more natural colored tubes and not the cool white tubes which have more of the blues and greens in them.

There are two basic time clocks. Industrial time clocks are wired into your electrical system and can control a complete circuit containing many lights. The home type of time clock is one that plugs into an outlet and is normally used in a home to turn a light on and off. One of the advantages of the industrial type is you can make as small an adjustment as you want when you want to change on and off times. You just loosen the screw, move it slightly and re-tighten it. They are also heavy duty for a long life and can handle quite a few lights.

Industrial type time clock.

The main advantage of the home type is they are easy to find and use. A disadvantage of the home type is that it has plug-in on/off switches with a minimum adjustment of 15 minutes. Another disadvantage of the home type time clock is that they normally do not have a grounding plug or slot.

Home style time clock

  Green - on

  Red - off

  Notice there is not a grounding plug in the back and there is not a hole for a grounding plug on the time clock itself.

Most people cannot see their birds' lights in the evening and morning. So how do you know the time clock is really working? We plug a home style time clock into the circuit of lights that are coming on and off each night. Nothing is plugged into this time clock – we just use it as a monitoring device. The dial on this time clock is set at 12:00. Every morning we check to see how long the time clock has run the previous night and then turn it back to 12:00. If your lights are supposed to be on for two hours in the evening and two hours in the morning, then the time clock should read 4:00 in the morning when you pick up eggs. If it doesn't, then something is not working correctly. Of course this will not tell you if a bulb has burned out - but only if your time clock is working correctly.

Monitoring time clock to  make sure the controlling time clock is working properly - must be reset to 12:00 each morning.

It is probably better to have two smaller lights instead of just one big light in case one bulb burns out. The birds will not be as adversely affected with some light versus no light.

If your birds have access to an outside pen during the night, you should light that pen, too. You want them exposed to the light, no matter where they bed down at night. By the way, the light enters the brain directly, it does not go through their eyes – so the light stimulates them whether they are awake or asleep.

Geese are unique in how light stimulates them reproductively. No one photo-stimulates geese in North America to maximize egg production - as is typically done with other poultry. The reason is that excessive light (meaning 13+ hour lighted day lengths) depresses egg production in geese. For other poultry you maximize egg production with 16-17 hour days. You can only achieve maximum egg production in geese by providing a maximum of 10-11 hour days! Looking at the light charts from last week's blog, you can see that most of the time our days are longer than 11 hours – and this is too long for maximum egg production for geese. So to maintain egg production as long as possible in geese, you need light tight houses – which means no natural light enters the building. The only light is provided by lights so you can provide them only 10 or 11 hours of light a day - no matter the time of year. More on this later.

Next week will be our Best Blog Ever. But, sorry, no clues on the subject. That is the surprise.

For those of you that enjoy our blogs, please sign up on the upper, left side of this page. Just type in your email address and hit “Subscribe”. You will then be sent an email and link every time a new blog is posted. It is easy to unsubscribe if you ever lose interest in our blogs.  I wouldn't know why!  But I suppose anything is possible! :)

 

How to Use Lights to Increase Duck Egg Production

Originally posted by John Metzer on Thu, Nov 11, 2010 @ 01:11 PM 

The use of artificial lights is very important in extending the egg production of ducks.  An increasing day length (December 21 to June 21) stimulates birds to lay more eggs and shorter days (June 21 to December 21) stimulate them to lay fewer eggs and eventually stop egg production.  Therefore, the control of day length is very important in starting, maintaining and stopping egg production in ducks.

To start egg production
When we stimulate our duck breeders to start egg production in December, we add ¾ of an hour in the morning and ¾ hour in the evening to the natural day length.  Then every 3-4 days we add another half hour alternating between the morning and evening until we get to a total of 17 hours of light and 7 hours of dark.

To maintain egg production
It is important that you increase your day length to equal the longest day of the year in your latitude.  Why?  So that your ducks never notice the days getting shorter starting June 21.  Let us assume your longest natural day length is 17 hours but you only added enough artificial light in the spring to go up to 16 hours.  Well, your birds will be subjected to increasingly shorter days from June 21 until some time in July or August when the natural day length is down to 16 hours.  And they will lay fewer eggs because of this shortening of their day.  From that point on they will have 16 hours of light, but some of the damage will have already occurred.

To stop egg production
If you want your birds to go into a molt, turn off the artificial lights.  This will help shock their system into a molt and rest period.

Intensity of Light
Birds do not need an intense light to stimulate them.  It can be as little as .5 footcandle but it is probably better to get a level of 3-5 footcandles.  In general this means sufficient light to read a newspaper.  Oftentimes this light level is met about a half hour prior to sunrise and stops a half hour after sunset.

The following charts show the natural day length of three latitudes in the US.  You can set your day length according to these charts.  If you prefer, you can go the Gaisma website for a chart like this for your city.    For exact sunrise and sunset times for every day of the year in your town, you can go to the US Navy Oceanography website.  You want to use the civil sunrise and sunset times (the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon) as this is about the point the light is at about 3-5 footcandles.

These charts are marked in military time – 6 is 6am, 12 is noon, 18 is 6pm.  Sample cities for each sample latitude are shown below each chart.

For this northern latitude, the lights should come on about 4:30am and go off at 9:45pm.

For this central latitude, the lights should come on about 5am and turn off about 9:15pm.

In this southern US latitude, the lights should come on about 5:45am and go off at 9:00pm.

Next week we will discuss timeclocks, types of lights to use, how to make sure your lights are working and how geese do not follow the same rules as ducks in terms of light stimulation and egg production.

Results of Duck Breeder Flock Culling

Originally posted by John Metzer on Wed, Aug 11, 2010 @ 12:37 PM

Last week we went through our Rouen, Cayuga, White Crested and Fawn and White Runner breeder flocks.  Each female was picked up and the distance between her pelvic bones was estimated.  This technique was shown in our last blog: Determining Which of Your Ducks Is Laying. I want to share the results with you.
The Fawn and White Runner flock had 405 females in it that were at 33% egg production (this means we were getting an average 33 eggs a day for every 100 females).  We put a fence down the middle of the pen, one side for the "keepers" and one side for the cull birds. After checking each female, we had 175 females in the "keep" flock and 230 females in the cull flock.  The next day the females in the "keep" flock layed 112 eggs which is a rate of 64%.  The females in the group that we will not keep laid 6 eggs which is a rate of 3%!

So by checking each female, we removed 57% of our feed bill and only lost 5% of our eggs!  As there are now fewer females in the pen, we will also use less shavings.  Of course we were able to remove some of the males, too.  As far as we know, there is no way to visually determine the fertility of a male but you can cull out any males that are less thrifty than the others, have bad legs or appear to have been picked on by other birds.
The results for the other flocks was just as impressive:

Cayuga start 49%, after culling: keep flock 66%, cull flock 7%

White Crested start 35%, after culling: keep flock 69%, cull flock 1%

Rouen start 43%, after culling: keep flock 66%, cull flock 7%

Mallard start 30%. after culling: keep flock 63%, cull flock 0%

Of all the breeds, the Mallards were the easiest to differentiate layers from nonlayers.  As you can see, over half the females were  removed and there were no eggs in the cull flock pen the next morning.

The picture shows the keep and cull flocks of Fawn and White Runners.  As you can see, there is very little difference in appearance in the two flocks.  You have to pick up each bird and check it.  It is basically a comparison with other birds of the same breed so if you have never done it before, check 10-15 birds and note the difference among them.  Then start over and remove those birds in which their pelvic bones are stiffer and closer together than the others.

In our next blog we will be addressing how to use the feed formulation program on our website. http://www.metzerfarms.com/FeedConversion.cfm.  Many times you cannot find feed with the correct level of protein.  This program will show you how much to mix of two different feeds to achieve the protein (or other nutrient) level you want to achieve.
Thank you! Enjoy your ducks and geese!