After a long - VERY long - hiatus, I have returned with something to report. With six female ducks currently residing here on the Unfarm, they deliver eggs on a semi regular basis (at least during the spring and summer months). That said, they do not always deliver said eggs into the nest boxes that we built for that exact purpose. In fact, they regularly drop eggs anywhere BUT the nest boxes. In the middle of the coop, for example. Or the corner of the coop, next to the divider separating the majority of the boys from the girls during the night. Once we found an entire nest of eggs under the tarp covering the wood pile. And another one in the middle of the bamboo grove.
The ducks are not the only birds guilty of unauthorized nest building: the chickens once had a nest in the corner of the yard by the blueberry bushes. Another chicken was regularly going missing until we discovered that she was routinely flying over the fence into the front yard and laying an egg a day in a corner of the front yard, right beside the house and next to a pile of wooden boards. She had amassed quite the collection when we finally discovered her. One of our most recent arrivals, a hen named Sugar, was disappearing into a second bamboo grove and had about 15 eggs hidden there, and that was just a couple of weeks ago.
The one thing that can be said in defense of the chickens is that once they do build a nest, they tend to leave it where it is. The ducks, on the other hand, spend a great deal of their nesting time (when they decide to nest in the duck coop) moving their nest from one spot to another within the coop. They roll eggs in. They roll eggs out. (This has occurred several times mid-hatch, resulting in the duckling trying to hatch not surviving.) Don't ask me why ducks do what they do. I have lived with them for years and still haven't entirely figured them out.
The other thing ducks do, which I have yet to figure out, is lay single eggs in random places. I often find eggs just laying around out in the yard. I find eggs in the duck run. I find eggs in the dog run (which all the birds have access to, the dogs being very well behaved with the birds.) I find eggs next to the outdoor sink. I have even found an egg in the duck pool. The one I found today was discovered near the bamboo. I never know exactly where or when I will come across an egg, making me feel like every day is like Easter around here.
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| The egg I discovered today, which prompted this post |
