Brooding muscovies

[Buck Oakes]

If u just let the eggs build up the females will brood, some first time mothers however get bored and will leave the nest, other first time mothers are very successful

When mine are broody I keep them separate unless they're sharing a nest, and I lock them up during the day and let them out in the evening for free time, if u keep the hen near her eggs a good portion of the time she'll become broody

 

[Brookenheil]

I haven't seen her outside of the hutch in 4 days so hopefully she's having fun in there and won't get bored *fingers crossed*. Also we have moved the other duck laying area to inside of our chicken coop, which seems to be working splendidly. The rest of the girls seem to be leaving her alone.

I am wondering about the gestation date as we have 2 khaki campbells that possibly have some fertile eggs in the nest where our muscovy is brooding. I know kc eggs generally hatch a week or so sooner than muscovy, however if they are fertile then it would be from our muscovy drake making them crosses. My understanding is that crosses hatch around 33 days which is close to muscovy gestation. I guess my question is if the crosses hatch first, will she abandon the other eggs and let them die? That is my guess, but I hope that is not the case as we really have no way to hatch out later eggs. I would really love to be able to tell the kc eggs apart from the muscovy as we only really want to hatch the muscovy eggs, but they all look the same to me. Too bad they are not like my chicken eggs, very easy to tell EE from Barred Rock.