A doomed clutch?

[Frank Phinster]

Hey everybody, sorry I didn't update for a week, end of semester rolls by and that means work...

Also there wasn't much to tell about my broody except that she was still sitting on the eggs with no result.
Yesterday I took out the last egg. Two more had disappeared and when mother duck took a break I took a close look at the last egg. It smelled bad and I could see large, brownish spots beneath the shell. I concluded that nothing will ever come out of this one so I threw it away. When mother duck returned she appeared confused but decidet to stay on the nest...For a split second I thought about giving her some recently laid runner eggs, but she has been sitting on that nest for almost six weeks now and another four are just too much in my opinion. Not to mention that I already have eleven ducks right now so no ducklings is somewhat disappointing but certainly a relief...

I guess the shed was just overcrowded and something, not sure whether it was the crows, the magpies that like to hang out in our yard or some kind of thieving mammal ( maybe I should lay out some rat poison just to be sure...) took the eggs.

Well, there's always a new breeding season.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Hey everybody, sorry I didn't update for a week, end of semester rolls by and that means work...

Also there wasn't much to tell about my broody except that she was still sitting on the eggs with no result.
Yesterday I took out the last egg. Two more had disappeared and when mother duck took a break I took a close look at the last egg. It smelled bad and I could see large, brownish spots beneath the shell. I concluded that nothing will ever come out of this one so I threw it away. When mother duck returned she appeared confused but decidet to stay on the nest...For a split second I thought about giving her some recently laid runner eggs, but she has been sitting on that nest for almost six weeks now and another four are just too much in my opinion. Not to mention that I already have eleven ducks right now so no ducklings is somewhat disappointing but certainly a relief...

I guess the shed was just overcrowded and something, not sure whether it was the crows, the magpies that like to hang out in our yard or some kind of thieving mammal ( maybe I should lay out some rat poison just to be sure...) took the eggs.

Well, there's always a new breeding season.

Sorry Frank about the eggs, but you made the right decision not to give her more, she needs to get her body back in shape. Makes me nervous when people talk about putting out poison though when around our flocks. I know you know what your doing though.

 

[Frank Phinster]

It's good to see her walking around the pen again and enjoying herself

I am not a friend of poison and I have used it only two times so far when we had rats. I don't know how people feel about talking freely about how that stuff works in a thread, but it is a poison of the newer generation, more efficient and more safer to use than older kinds.
I also only lay it out outside the pen so my ducks have absolutely no access to it.