I have a handful of ducks and
chickens. The
chickens are reds and reliably lay one clean brown egg per day.
The ducks were slower to begin laying. One started laying just a week after we got rid of the males (a hen was killed before we got rid of them-- we didn't have a setup to keep ducks and
chickens apart).
So we learned the female duck can keep semen around internally for a while, so we hoped that at least a couple of her clutch would be fertile. Now we're a week overdue. They're Muscovy and I read 37 days
should be the max. She started sitting Nov 13. I'm afraid being 4 days overdue we have a patient mother that just needs to "let go".
Question-- Should we intervene? She still seems very committed, and neighbors tell us she'll figure it out herself soon
enough. Part of me still hopes one or two will hatch, but logically i assume, overdue means never-due. If we intervene, will she get really depressed, or move on in a day or two?
funny eggs
Two of the other 3 ducks eventually started laying. One day I collected a really huge duck egg. The next day I collected a really tiny one. I hypothesize they came from the same duck(!). Casually holding it up to the light, I thought the tiny one had no yolk. I did a search and read about "fairy eggs" which are tiny and have no yolks.
But then we opened both eggs. The tiny one
did have a teeny tiny yolk! Though, it wasn't a neat ball (or broke when I broke the egg).
The huge one turned out to be an egg inside of an egg. I mean, when I cracked it into a bowl, there was some albumen, but what dropped into the bowl was pretty clearly a non-hardened whole egg. I tore that open and there was the normal amount of yolk and albumen inside that. I looked that up too and it's also a thing.
Question
After I fished out the non-hard shell of the inner egg, we did go ahead and eat it. But I'm wondering if it's technically sanitary. How far did the soft egg get before it moved backwards and got encased in a second eggshell? The reason I have doubts is because I've observed that, more recently, when our third duck finally started laying eggs, the first couple eggs seemed really dirty. Maybe there is a better explanation for why-- like it being her first one, maybe she nosed it around a lot? But it had a rough texture and the dirtiness seemed embedded in that. A week later her daily eggs are much prettier. I don't know enough about their anatomy to understand why eggs could come out dirty (and why the first several would be especially dirty and then later, not.). Any super cool knowledge out there about this?
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