Duckling introduction to it's parents

You cannot leave a duckling that a duck didn't hatch out with the duck flock. They will have absolutely no maternal instincts towards it and won't take care of it. Worse yet, they may even kill it. I hope you didn't leave it out there with them - if you did you need to go get it back and set it up in a brooder. Don't try to introduce it again until it is nearly fully grown and big enough to defend itself against the others if they do decide to fight with it. You also will want to get it a friend to brood with and to introduce with it when you do the introductions if you don't have a friend for it already.
 
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No think you misunderstood,tbey are not together or stay together yet...It is not our only duckling it was really a supervised quick hello, we have a great set up inside for our lil precious babies until they are older to be Fully introduced.
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It is also thier eggs we hatched from but again I would never leave ojt there, my question was simply do they really not recgonize thirr own unless they hatch
 
Oh good, I was nervous there for a minute. If you had done that you wouldn't have been the first person to do it, so that's why I clarified that you can't leave him out with his parents.

And no, they will not recognize the baby as theirs if the mother did not hatch it herself :)
 
We had a hen hatch 7 ducklings and leave 2 eggs in the nest. We hatched the two eggs in the hatching incubator and we took 3 ducklings away from the hen so we had hoped she would accept the 2 as her own once we had time to be out with her and watch her with them but it did not work. We actually took 2 of her ducklings she has been raising and brought them inside with the other 2 to bond. That worked fine but when we took all 4 out to the hen she quickly figured out which two did not belong. They were able to mix in with the other 4 for awhile and snuggle under her but when they were not under her she tried to chase them away.

We ended up bringing all 4 inside together since we will be selling them and we left 2 ducklings with the hen to raise. Now I will have to separate the hens and drakes to keep a buyer from inbreeding them but it sounds like we have 2 boys and 2 girls that can stay with each other as long as I combine them with ducklings of the opposite sex from a younger hatch. I would prefer to keep all 4 together except someone would probably let them inbreed if I did that and we have worked too hard to diversify the genetics of this rare breed to allow someone to breed brothers and sisters together.
 

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