Broody instincts in runners ...

[GrannySue]

... not!

I get 3 or 4 eggs from my 4 runner girls overnight. Every night one of them makes a rudimentary nest on the floor and all the eggs are laid there. Mostly.
A new nest is made every night, even though the first one isn't disturbed.
I've left eggs all day, just as an experiment, to see if someone would add to it the next night but they make a new nest anyway, leaving the previous day's eggs.
Now, I know that runners have never competed for "Mother of the Year" awards but this morning, not for the first time, I found a duck egg in the middle of the yard. One of the girls just popped it out and left it!
I guess that's why we have incubators.

 

[Ducklove334]

you can borrow my two LOL, i have no idea how old these two girls were when we got them, but they werb't young as they were "of laying age", ALL they want to do is brood brood brood brood BROOD!, never hatched a darned thing all year either, they were very persistant over both sharing a single egg, then Rosilee my muscovy popped in and layed a single egg, both were going strong, then recently the runner egg went bad, the a few days later the muscovy, so no mother hood for any of them yet.

 

[froggie71]

Both of my runner girls are very broody! They never heard that they shouldn't be. LOL They share a nest across from my 2 Blue Swedish who share a nest.

 

[WriterofWords]

Broody doesn't happen just because they lay an egg, it's a cycle, when it's time to be broody, they go broody, you can't force it. My Runner Hershey doesn't seem to recognize the end of the cycle and doesn't stop being broody!