How to keep duck eggs clean

[@minutemanprep]

Your videos are extremely helpful. I appreciate you posting videos.

[@parccarreg]

Thank you! Glad you're finding them helpful

[@Lakelandcowboy69]

Great video. I'm in the USA and appreciate this information. Helping me a lot.

[@parccarreg]

Thanks for the comment!

[@stevegibson8062]

What size+type of woodchip do you find works best in your nest barrels? We have a flock of 100+ WH ducks, and have tried all sorts of ways to got cleaner eggs, including communal rollaway nest boxes. We have a ready supply of the barrels you used, so would like to trial your solution.

[@parccarreg]

Awesome. By WH do you mean Welsh Harlequin? Where abouts are you based? The woodchip we use is not really wood chip. They call it a grade 2 dust. It comes as a byproduct from biomass fuel production where they kiln dry wood chips and then they shake all the dust out of it. So the product we get is more like a fine wood shavings / bark. It's hard to explain, it's similar to sawdust but less fine. The important thing is that it's incredibly dry. If you can't find grade 2 dust then a very dry sawdust would do the trick. Have you had much success with roll away nest boxes?

[@stevegibson8062]

@@parccarreg Thanks for the woodchip info, yes on the Welsh Harlequins, and we're based in Victoria, Australia. The rollaways worked reasonably well during peak laying, we'd get up to 10 eggs in one box each day, but as the ducks are now going off the lay, those that are still laying are preferring other nest options, and the rollaways are empty. My next "experiment" is to remove the other nesting options now that egg production has decreased, and provide only rollaways to see if they'll go back to them, or just drop them in corners. If that works, we'll keep moving forward with them, but if not, we'll set up a trial of your barrel nests.

[@parccarreg]

@@stevegibson8062 very interesting. I would love to see your roll away box designs if you have a video or picture of them....

[@stevegibson8062]

​@@parccarreg They're commercial roll away nests we bought second hand from a chicken egg farmer. Unlike most chicken nest boxes, these are big and roomy, around 400mm deep, so plenty of space for the ducks to climb in and move around.

[@stevegibson8062]

The ones we are trialing are - communal rollaway nests from Farmer Little.

[@iamwuf]

How do you clean the eggs if they end up getting dirty?

[@parccarreg]

All of our eggs get washed. This is standard practise with duck eggs because of the fact that they lay on the floor. We use a special egg washing machine. Even though we manage to keep our eggs pretty clean, they are white and show up dirt much easier than brown chicken eggs, so washing them is much better for the customer.

[@andrewsharp3451]

Mallard duck will lay in raised nests tho. 😁

[@parccarreg]

Do you have any pictures?