Oh Happy Day: The Year’s First Duck Egg

First Duck Egg of 2017We’ve noticed that the Muscovy ducks that hatched in spring of last year have been checking out the nest boxes in the chicken coop and sampling the oyster shell from the hanging feeder. It made us hopeful that, despite the fact that many Muscovy ducks will stop laying over the winter, ours would begin laying soon.

When we let the ducks out of the coop for breakfast this morning, one of the girls immediately ran over to the chicken coop pop door (which was still closed) and stood on the ramp. By the time we got there and opened the pop door, she had already left and was headed into the barn. We followed her to see what she was doing, and found her snuggled down into a corner. Very promising!

After finishing the rest of the morning chores, we checked back on the duck in the barn. What we found was a beautiful tan egg lying safely on a bed of straw. The duck must have laid her egg quickly (hence the sense of urgency to get into the chicken coop) and then joined the others for breakfast…and around here, “if you snooze, you lose” – the other ducks and chickens won’t save any food for you.

It’s only one egg for now, but we’re hoping it heralds the beginning of the laying season for our girls. Most of them are new layers and they may not all start laying at the same time; nonetheless, we have many more layers this year and when they’re all laying, will have eggs aplenty. Duck eggs are great to eat or to bake with, and our incubators have just been waiting for some eggs to hatch. It felt like a long wait for this egg, but it was worth it!