AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

Ok so I have this duck that I was given off an old work colleague and she's seems a little on the special side. I've only ever kept muscovies before so this could be completely normal behaviour and it's just different to muscovies, but I find it a bit odd.

My muscovies always scout around for nest sites when they're coming up to lay and I can see little dug out spots around the garden, so I keep an eye on these spots until I find eggs then I'll replace the eggs with fake ones so they continue to lay there and harvest their eggs every day until they go clucky. However, this new duck that I have (mallard x?) has recently started laying and she appears to have zero nesting instinct. I've found eggs under a tree (not very sheltered at all), next to the shed, 2 in the shed (in different spots), one up next to my patio, one that appears to have rolled down the ramp to the bath tub as it was sitting in a clump of weeds at the bottom of the ramp with a crack in it and the list of odd places continues. Today I was cleaning out their bath tub and I discovered 6 eggs at the bottom of the bath, all of them very cracked but seemed to have been laid recently as none were obviously rotten.

Is it normal for non-muscovy type ducks to lay in water? I understand they might like water more than muscovies and she does hang out in the bath a lot, but do you think maybe she'd prefer to make a nest on the water or around water and the best she can get is in the water since there's no plants in or around the bath? To me it almost seems like she doesn't even know she's laying an egg and it just pops out wherever she happens to be, lol. Any suggestions as to how I can at least stop her laying IN the water? Shutting them in at night I could possibly do if I really had to, though I don't think they really go in their shed anymore to sleep so I could be chasing them around for ages trying to get them in there and I get home pretty late.

Its quite a normal thing for certain ducks to lay an egg here and there before deciding to lay in one spot and sitting. Even laying eggs while swimming is not uncommon, perhaps she's just young and perhaps with no mate will not have the nesting instinct as yet. My mallard crosses are exactly the same.

She's laid probably a good dozen or more eggs, I've also found a couple of what I suspect to be shell-less eggs, it just looks like a slimy patch of white with no yolk and no shell. She is free ranging with my muscovies and there is a drake, though I'm not sure if he's shown her any attention. Hopefully it's just because she's young and hasn't figured it out yet. My muscovies are gearing up to lay so maybe she'll learn what to do with eggs from them.

Also just wanting to check, I currently have 3 drakes, 1 has 4 ducks, the other two were sharing 2 ducks, though now that the ducks have matured the drakes were fighting so I've separated one by himself. I was eventually wanting to put all the girls together with one drake, is 6 ducks too many for one drake to service effectively? And will drakes still fight if there's enough females to keep them happy?

I can vouch for that 2 of my muscovy's lay all over the yards and never in the one place I think they like to make me go looking for them