We have been breeding Muscovy for 3 years now and have had a pretty successful side business of selling them as meat and pets (ducklings). We keep 3 males and 9 hens as our breeding stock and sell off all the others or process for meat. We had a really long and hard winter so the hens started laying really late this year. Once they did start laying and sitting this year, we have had numerous failed hatches from various hens. Almost all the eggs didn't develop enough to hatch. We have only had to 3 hatches by hens this season so far, and they were not big numbers at all - 1 hen even hatched out only 1 egg. I had a group of eggs I had to throw in the incubator because the hen abandoned the nest when she saw ducklings running around (she wanted to mother them). That group hatched out 4. All the previous years we have had amazing hatch rates, one hen even hatched out a little over 30 eggs in one clutch! What could be causing this? One of the thought I had was that towards the end of the hatching season last year, we had switched the food from a Gamebird Grower pellet to a Finisher/Maintenance Pellet due to problems with angel wing in the ducklings that was showing up (which did go away with that switch in the last hatch). Could this be affecting the hatch rate? Should we just put them on a layer pellet?
Our Muscovy have done well in shows and their meat is fantastic, will we be sacrificing that with a switch to layer pellet? They do free range all day, but the pellets are there for back up.
I was also told you could go up to 4 generations of breeding before you have to introduce new blood, could this be the reason, even though we are not at 4 gen yet? We did add 1 new hen a year ago.
Thank you for any suggestions!
Our Muscovy have done well in shows and their meat is fantastic, will we be sacrificing that with a switch to layer pellet? They do free range all day, but the pellets are there for back up.
I was also told you could go up to 4 generations of breeding before you have to introduce new blood, could this be the reason, even though we are not at 4 gen yet? We did add 1 new hen a year ago.
Thank you for any suggestions!
