Duck Egg Production Calculator: Eggs a Week, a Year, and Feed Cost per Dozen

Tell the calculator which breeds you keep, how many laying ducks, whether any drakes live with them and whether you light the house through the winter, and it gives the eggs to expect in a year and in an average week. Put in what a bag of feed costs you and it works out what a dozen of those eggs costs you in feed.

Key takeaways

• Metzer Farms’ breed chart gives every breed two egg figures a year: the lower one without artificial light, the upper one with 17 hours of light through lay. The calculator uses whichever matches what you do.
• By that chart a Khaki Campbell lays 165 eggs a year on daylight and up to 240 with lights; a Jumbo Pekin 140 to 175 and the Grimaud hybrid Pekin 150 to 200; a Call duck 25 to 50; the hybrid layers 200 to 290.
• Eggs do not come evenly. Metzer says laying is heaviest from spring into summer and declines, or stops, in autumn and winter without extra light — so “eggs a week” is an average, not a promise for any particular week.
• Feed is the running cost. eXtension puts a laying duck at 120 g a day; Metzer’s chart puts most breeds nearer 0.4 lb (about 180 g). The feed cost per dozen therefore comes as a range, not a single number.
• Nobody authoritative publishes how laying changes in a duck’s second, third or later year, so the calculator does not pretend to know.

Where the egg numbers come from

Every egg figure in the calculator is Metzer Farms’. Metzer is a California hatchery with its own breeder flocks, and it publishes a comparison chart with a yearly egg range for each one. The same chart drives Quackoria’s duck breed comparison, so the two tools always agree.

The range matters more than it looks. Metzer’s note on the chart says the lower figure is without artificial light and the upper assumes 17 hours of light through lay. So the gap between 165 and 240 for a Khaki Campbell is not uncertainty about the breed — it is mostly the difference between a duck that rests through the short days and one kept under lights.

Some breeds sit far apart from the rest. The Golden 300 Hybrid Layer and the White Layer, both Metzer’s own hybrids, are charted at 200 to 290 eggs. The Muscovy, a separate species, is charted at 100 to 150 and starts later in the spring than other ducks, by Metzer’s account. The three bantams lay least: a Call duck 25 to 50, an Australian Spotted 50 to 125 and a Mallard 60 to 120. If you keep a mix, add a row for each breed; the calculator adds them up and shows each breed’s share.

Light: the biggest thing you control

Day length drives laying. Metzer’s lighting guide puts it plainly: increasing day length, from 21 December to 21 June, stimulates birds to lay more, and shorter days, from 21 June to 21 December, make them lay fewer and eventually stop. When Metzer brings its own breeders into lay in December, it first adds three-quarters of an hour of light in the morning and three-quarters in the evening, then another half hour every three or four days until the ducks have 17 hours of light and 7 of dark. It notes that the light does not need to be bright — as little as half a foot-candle works, though 3 to 5 foot-candles is probably better.

The published figures for “enough” light differ. Metzer says ducks need at least 17 hours of light to lay continuously through the year. The University of Georgia’s extension service says ducks can be brought into full production with 14 hours of light a day once they are mature. So the calculator’s “lights” setting carries Metzer’s upper figure, and the page says the published figures run from 14 to 17 hours.

Whether to light a duck house through the winter is your decision, not the calculator’s. It simply shows both answers — with the lights and without — so the difference is in front of you in eggs, and in the feed cost of a dozen.

Eggs a week is an average

The weekly figure is the year’s total divided by 52. It is useful for planning — how many eggs the kitchen will see over a year, how many dozen there might be to give away — but no real duck lays like that.

Metzer describes the pattern: laying is heaviest from spring into summer and starts to decline, or stops, through autumn and winter. It also varies by breed. Metzer’s own example is that a Khaki Campbell lays a lot and is even likely to lay year-round, while a Mallard lays fewer eggs and is likely to slow or stop come autumn and winter. Stress lowers laying too — in Metzer’s words, “If a duck is stressed, it will not lay as well.”

The University of Georgia gives a useful yardstick for meat-type breeds such as the Pekin: daily lay should stay above 50 per cent for about five months. That is a check on a Pekin’s yearly figure rather than a number the calculator uses.

Young ducks, and old ones

If your ducks are not laying yet, choose “Not laying yet”. The calculator still shows what the flock should lay once it starts, and adds when that is likely to be. Metzer’s FAQ says ducks are sexually mature at 20 to 24 weeks and, with the right feed and lighting, start laying then; otherwise they start as the days lengthen and it warms up in spring. The University of Georgia adds the season’s effect on young birds: ducks hatched from April to July mature at about seven months because they grow up through shortening days, while ducks hatched from September to January mature one to two months earlier. There is more on this in when do ducks start laying eggs.

At the other end of a duck’s life the evidence runs out. Some sites will give you a percentage by which laying falls each year; we could not find one from a university, an extension service or a hatchery, so the calculator does not reduce the estimate for older ducks. Choose “In their third year or older” and it keeps the same figure but labels it as a ceiling — the most they are likely to lay — rather than the number to expect.

Feed per dozen, and what a dozen costs you

The cost side is where the two published feed figures part company, and the calculator keeps both.

eXtension, the university extension network, says in an article by Jacquie Jacob of the University of Kentucky that laying ducks typically eat 120 g of feed a day — a quarter of a pound — varying with how many eggs they lay and how much they forage. Metzer’s feed chart puts a laying duck of most breeds at about 0.4 lb a day, a laying Pekin at about 0.48 lb, a Runner at 0.3 lb and a Mallard at 0.2 lb. For each duck the calculator takes the lower and the higher of the two, counts that for all 365 days, and adds any drakes at Metzer’s figure for birds that are not laying.

That makes the answer a little high for a flock that rests in winter, because Metzer’s chart shows ducks eating less while they are not laying, and the page says so. It is also for bought feed only: eXtension notes that the amount varies with how much there is to forage, and that ducks can forage for some of what they need. eXtension also puts the comparison with hens bluntly — ducks eat 20 to 30 per cent more feed per dozen eggs than chickens do.

A worked example. Four Khaki Campbells on daylight alone lay about 660 eggs a year, which is 55 dozen. They eat between 365 and 584 lb of feed a year, which is 6.6 to 10.6 lb of feed for every dozen eggs. At 20 for a 50 lb bag — in whatever currency you pay — that is about 146 to 234 a year, or 2.65 to 4.25 a dozen in feed. Put the same four ducks under lights and Metzer’s figure rises to 960 eggs, or 80 dozen, and the feed cost falls to about 1.83 to 2.92 a dozen, because the same feed is spread over more eggs.

The calculator never asks for a currency and never converts one. It multiplies your bag price by the feed, so the answer is in whatever money you typed.

What the calculator will not do

It will not draw a month-by-month laying curve. No authoritative source publishes one for backyard ducks, and a curve made up to look precise would be worse than an honest average.

It will not tell you why a duck has stopped laying. Metzer lists the usual reasons — shortening days, stress, breed — and most are ordinary. But a duck that stops laying and also looks unwell, stops eating, strains, or stands apart from the flock needs a vet, not a feed calculation. The common duck health problems guide has the signs.

And it does not count anything but feed: no housing, bedding, grit, oyster shell or vet bills. For the day-to-day feed amounts, use the duck feed calculator; to work backwards from the eggs you want to the ducks you need, use the flock planner. Once the eggs arrive, collecting and storing duck eggs and the egg freshness checker cover the rest, and the duck egg converter turns them into a recipe’s worth of chicken eggs. For how they compare in the kitchen, see duck eggs vs chicken eggs.