I let my pair of Rouens hatch, she was acting broody and not laying anyway. Now, 2 new ducklings and she is still guarding the nest with eggs in it, she rejected a couple that had 1/2 developed ducks, open and partly eaten before I trashed them! Smells soooo awful!
But, so much easier than the incubator.
If you let your birds in the compost, that will not happen!
That sounds like it! The eggs were pushed out of the nest, down the ramp, and into the corner, then eaten. Regardless, as soon as I finish eating lunch, Mari's bee-hind is going to be sitting on 4 ceramic and 1 Leghorn egg.The hens sometimes "get rid of" a bad egg they will push it out of the nest and it breaks, they will eat it to remove something that could attract a predator to the nest, just like a wild bird does. Animals will eat the after-birth for the same reason. I just try to not give them a reason to need to do such clean-up!
I say let them invade...LOL. The top blooms will give me more seeds to feed I hope. Also I'ves seen some say it's a good cover crop plant if I plant outside it will smother some weeds and be a good chop and drop mulch.
All the things in that link are good, and just boil down to not giving them a reason/chance to eat eggs! They can learn how tasty they are and then are almost impossible to break of the habit. I like to get cat kibble from Costco, 30% protein and small enough to mix into their scratch. (If you worry about such things you should get the Salmon/fish flavor -- mine like the chicken cat food just fine)! Scratch is worthless as protein, I give them wild bird seed that is about 12-15% protien and add in enough of the cat food to get it up to 20%. Ducks get it straight as a treat, lots of Niacin and it floats.
