The Poultry Keeper

sasha.p · Joined: 04 Sep 2005 Posts: 472 Location: gwent

I had this problem before but it was before i had all my other houses and a huge run the magpies targeted my hens eggs before so i dealt with it and put a stop to their access into the house i even borrowed a larson trap but did not have the nerve to kill them so just released them again but it did deter them from coming back anyway this time the sods are targeting my duck house angryfire

, the night before last dh decided as the ducks were refusing to go in that he would leave them out which was pretty brave if you ask me knowing how many foxes we have around anyway i went up yesterday to let all my birds out half expected my ducks not to be there but they were but to my shock i saw all my lovley freshley laid duck eggs outside on the floor and there was a carrion crow and magpies all having a picnic cussing

only thing is now yesterday and today my ducks have been a complete nightmare to get in my dogs decided they want to quit rounding my birds up and left the run and left me to it to catch each duck individually to put them in Mad

the point is the duck house has no way of being altered so the wild birds can not steal their eggs as they seem to lay them anywhere in the house and not in a nest box maybe this has somthing to do with their height but the magpies have certainley been watching usually we let them out late but now we have a new dilemma where they want to stay out and not go in at night.

how can i stop the eggs being stolen i camcordered them last year so i knew how they actually done it when we went they were straight in the house they did not quite know what to make of the marble egg i left for them but they kept trying to crack it open To funny

guess i had better look for my old thread on this one and any advise from anyone would also be appreciated Smile

milkmaid · Joined: 19 Apr 2005 Posts: 6968 Location: isle of lewis

if you could cut a pop hole maybe you could make a baffle ,it is like a box to go in it tends to make them a bit nervoous ,what we do is shut them in the duck house and not let them out till 11 and then collect all the eggs
we had a ploblem at work ,the eggs come in on pallets if they are left outside for a few minutes before we can get them in every crow from miles around comes and steals the eggs ,we had 3 in the warehouse the other day ,inside grabbing loaves of bread they were plastic wrapped Confused