Help! Mother duck ate duckling!!

Crazy4Fowl said:

I have had a khaki campbell duck brooding on 16 eggs for 23 days. I went out to the coop today to find a bloody shell on the wood shavings. Then I see the mother eating a duckling with blood on it! I started yelling and by the time I got the hold of her she swallowed it. Yes it was ALIVE. Why would she do this? Was it for a reason? Or is she going to eat all of them?
Thanks, Crazy4fowl

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Orca5094 said:

Is this a new mom who hasn't had ducklings before? Unfortunately, sometimes they will do things like this because they just don't know what they're doing. New moms will sometimes break their eggs (either by mistake, or because they don't know what they are and are playing with them). Then they can get into the habit of doing it on purpose to eat the yummy yolk inside.

I would hazard a guess that she is an inexperienced mom and maybe accidentally broke open her egg and didn't know what to do with the wiggling thing inside and just ate it. It's very sad, but it happens. Do you have an incubator you could maybe put the other eggs into to keep them safe? Or maybe another duck/chicken who is broody you could give the eggs to? Unfortunately, since she's eaten one already there's a pretty good chance she'll do it again.

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Orca5094 said:

Is this a new mom who hasn't had ducklings before? Unfortunately, sometimes they will do things like this because they just don't know what they're doing. New moms will sometimes break their eggs (either by mistake, or because they don't know what they are and are playing with them). Then they can get into the habit of doing it on purpose to eat the yummy yolk inside.

I would hazard a guess that she is an inexperienced mom and maybe accidentally broke open her egg and didn't know what to do with the wiggling thing inside and just ate it. It's very sad, but it happens. Do you have an incubator you could maybe put the other eggs into to keep them safe? Or maybe another duck/chicken who is broody you could give the eggs to? Unfortunately, since she's eaten one already there's a pretty good chance she'll do it again.

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Orca5094 said:

Ok, I figured that might happen. Can you make a make-shift incubator until you can go out and get a real one? A box with a heat lamp (or even a regular lamp for now) over it perhaps? The eggs need to be kept at a temp right around 100 F, so you'll also need a thermometer to monitor the temperature. You don't want them to get too hot or too cold. I'm sure you can find some posts on here about home-made incubators that others have made, I've personally never made one myself so I don't have much more advise other than that. They'll also need humidity, so a bowl of water in the box with them might help for now. Really, they need a real incubator that is enclosed and can maintain a constant temp/humidity for these eggs to finish out their incubation and hatch out successfully for you. 

Or if you have another duck/chicken that is broody, you can stick them under that bird instead. This would be the best case scenario, but it sounds like you just had this one duck that is sitting on eggs, right?

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Orca5094 said:

Ok, I figured that might happen. Can you make a make-shift incubator until you can go out and get a real one? A box with a heat lamp (or even a regular lamp for now) over it perhaps? The eggs need to be kept at a temp right around 100 F, so you'll also need a thermometer to monitor the temperature. You don't want them to get too hot or too cold. I'm sure you can find some posts on here about home-made incubators that others have made, I've personally never made one myself so I don't have much more advise other than that. They'll also need humidity, so a bowl of water in the box with them might help for now. Really, they need a real incubator that is enclosed and can maintain a constant temp/humidity for these eggs to finish out their incubation and hatch out successfully for you.

Or if you have another duck/chicken that is broody, you can stick them under that bird instead. This would be the best case scenario, but it sounds like you just had this one duck that is sitting on eggs, right?

Click to expand...