Muskovies sitting in winter

Discussion in 'Breeding, Raising, Feeding and Caring for Animals' started by pippimac, Jun 15, 2011.

  1. pippimac

    pippimac Junior Member

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    My mum has four young ducks and a drake. Three of the ducks are sitting on their first clutches of "about fifty eggs each" according to my mother. Maybe a slight exaggeration ;), but there's still going to be many, many ducklings born in the middle of winter.
    Now, we're talking a NZ West Coast winter: very mild, but very wet.
    Any hints to avoid the deaths of 150 ducklings? My mother will ignore any advice that involves too much fiddling, coddling and worrying, but I'm thinking simple things, such as keep them away from water?
    I don't know much about ducks, but even chooks generally have enough sense not to sit in winter!
    There's two resident hawks and a falcon, which is unheard of, so saving ducklings from chilly weather is probably the least of our worries...
     
  2. sun burn

    sun burn Junior Member

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    did your mother actually ask for any advice. She may not take any notice of anything anyone says. And yes it does sound like the birds might be a greater problem.

    It seems to me that the ducks will have a hard time sitting on 50 eggs each so quite a number of them will either get booted out of the nest and/ or will not hatch. If the duck can't keep them warm and sat on, they will not survive. She will probably sit on as many as she can and she will move them around each day too so this could potentially cause more deaths when some get warmth one day and not the next. I'd say if there are 50 eggs (unlikely) then take some out of the nest. But it might be best anyway to let the ducks take care of it. I am pretty sure they know what htey are doing better than we do. I think 20 is a fairly common number for a duck to try to sit on and even that may be too many. So far in my batches there have only been 4 hatch out of any bunch. I don't know if i have caused this or not.

    Well i found that even in my warm climate, its a good idea to give the ducklings shallow water bowls and these will need filling up regularly once they've hatched for drinking water. By shallow i mean not deeper than an inch. I'd say if its cold hte mother will keep them under her quite a bit or they will endeavour to go there themselves. If they are near deeper water and they get wet, maybe they will run back to mum but the main thing is that they are able to get out of the water easily because they can drown from fatigue if they can't get out. Put ramps in and outside of the water ponds if necessary.

    The mother ducks are very assiduous. They keep a pretty close eye on things but the more they have i guess the harder it is to keep a good eye on them.

    Will the ducks be nesting in a cage? It might be best though the ducklings won't be able to forage. The only reason to keep them in there is to keep them away from those other birds. If you have a warm box or house for them, that would be nice. What about putting them in a garage or somewhere like that at night. She can move the duck and eggs before hatching - the sooner the better, i'd say. Its easier than doing it after. If you leave it till after, they will all keep trying to go back to the original nest.
     

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