Poultry

Black Cayuga Duck Egg

My First Black Cayuga Duck Egg!

I’ve been waiting, rather impatiently, for our Black Cayuga duck hen to lay her first egg. Today I was pleasantly surprised by this beauty. 🙂 I was expecting a darker-colored shell, but it is still a rather interesting shade. I think the dark color will wash off, however.

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This brings my number of duck hens laying eggs back up to four. Hopefully, I’ll be collecting nearly an egg a day from each duck for quite some time. I’d like to put some eggs in the incubator before the weather gets chilly. We’ll see how that goes.

This duck is approximately 5 months old and this is her first egg. My Pekins laid eggs at a slightly younger age (about 4.5 months old). The Black Cayuga may have originated from the English Black duck that was quite common in England until the Aylesbury duck was bred for better production and easier dressing (lighter-colored feathers). I think it’s kind of neat to have an old heritage breed of duck, but I don’t think I will be able to breed these ducks with my limited space. So I will probably keep just the female, and the males will be processed for meat soon.

I hope that my duck egg customers aren’t turned off by the unusual color of the shell. Would you eat this egg?

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16 Comments on “Black Cayuga Duck Egg

  1. I’m still getting an egg a day from my Runner and the pekin is pretty regular now too! The Pekin just lays where ever she is at that moment..no attempt to hide it. Don’t know if I freaked her out taking the first ones she had in the same spot or what. Love the ducks + their eggs..even more than the chickens!

  2. Hi Von,
    I enjoyed reading about your ducks, thanks for sharing! I am really enjoying mine too. In fact, I have an extra male that I need to butcher, but am not in a big rush to do the deed. 😉 The eggs are just slightly darker now than the Pekin eggs, and closer to the size of a chicken egg. We are enjoying them so much. 🙂 I think that I might incubate eggs from them in the spring. I hope you get some more rain for the duck pond!

  3. Lisa Lynn, I’ve been raising the Cayuga Ducks for over a year now. We use the eggs every day and last month we took 7 young males,(6 months old) in to have them butchered. I don’t have time to do it here on my place as I also run a campground. Since we haven’t had much rain here in the last 2 months our pond started to dry up. Where I kept the ducks they had access to the pond water without me worrying about snapping turtles getting them. We had that happen last year, but only lost one. However, I’m raising them for me, not the snapping turtles. Some of my eggs have been this color and it does wash off. If they are allowed to roll the eggs around and mess with it after they lay it, it will be this black color. We have a nesting house for them but no one is in it due to the pond water being so low right now. About 3 weeks ago, I felt sorry for them so I turned them all ten of them out into the pond. The snapping turtles are not a threat at this time of year. We have 9 hens and 1 male. Love the Cayuga Ducks and plan to raise many more of them both for the eggs and the meat.

  4. Yes, I would absolutely eat this egg. I love unusually colored eggs. Unfortunately, so many people are blinded to the variety of egg colors by always buying the white supermarket eggs. When we have an excess of chicken eggs we give them to our co-workers. These are mostly brown eggs mixed with some green/blue eggs. I found out from one co-worker that his wife threw out the green eggs because she considered them ‘bad’. I even sent educational information home with the eggs such as why the yolks were so yellow and how different chickens lay different eggs. Her loss though – she is left to the supermarket eggs from now on! I will not allow my ladies’ bounty to be wasted!

    1. Hi Ellen,
      I had that happen too…they no longer get eggs from me! I love the blue and green eggs and some people are willing to pay more for them, although not here. 🙂 Thanks for sharing!

  5. I would eat the various colored eggs including the Cayugas. I’ve never has duck eggs, so will have to search for some. They sound interesting, as well as tasting good.

    1. Hi Brenda,
      They do have a stronger flavor than chicken eggs…so some people love them and others don’t. I like them most for baking, but they are also great for French toast and scrambled eggs with veggies.

    1. Hi Alisa,
      That’s interesting…are there other breeds of ducks called Cayuga…or just Black Cayugas? I wonder if these eggs will start to lose their color. It’s interesting to see the different color. When I was a kid we had Pekins that laid eggs of a very light shade of mint green…they were so pretty!

  6. I’m so tickled that my Indian Runner has been laying an egg a day for last 30 days and my Pekin started finally..1 egg .a day so far. The Pekin is the one who changed her laying area after i took egg so now I always leave at least 1 egg in their nests Had to look all over yard for where each was laying and be sneaky about taking..love it!

    1. This is funny, Vikki…one of my Pekins just decided to start hiding her eggs in the weedy part of the pasture. So I have to go on an egg hunt every evening or the fox will get it! Thanks for sharing 🙂 And an egg a day is great…way to go little runner duck!

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