Broody WH what to do?

[chickkrzi]

I just got some Welsh Harlequins a few months ago ( 1 Drake 3 ducks). Have been getting quite a few eggs from the girls. Wasn't really sure if the eggs where fertile so i put 4 in with my Rhode Island Red eggs in my incubator. Seeing I'm new to having WH ducks or for that matter ducks in general. I didnt know what time of year they might go broody. So once i found my ducks where fertile, started working on some type of plan. Im a big fan of letting mom do all the work hatching the eggs. So I went to there nest every day and marked each egg with the date (with pencil on the air sack end) and place them back in the nest. And when i got about 14-15 eggs I then would remove the eggs with the oldest date trying to keep around 14 eggs in the nest. I'm thinking I done this for 3 weeks before one became broody. At last count she had 15 duck eggs, and she might have a few sexlink eggs as well (they like using her nest) and 2 golf balls that my chicken kept kicking out of there nesting boxes. So now i have a few questions for my expert WH owners.
1) if I pull her off her nest in 7 days to candle the eggs is there a chance she'll give up the nest?
2) Do I need to keep the others (duck, chickens) away for the duration of incubation?
3) If so would it be ok if i move her and her nest to the breeding pin where i could isolate her from the others? I've done this with hens (chickens) before with a great deal of success.
4) Before when i would have a broody hen i would feed her chick starter / grow during her time on the nest until the chicks where about 5 weeks old. Does this apply to broody ducks as well?
I really was expecting them to go broody until maybe end of March, guess I was wrong about that.

 

[Learningstill]

I am unsure about the specific breed. We will be hatching welsh this spring for the first time. We pulled a mallard and a campbell off nests to candle and they continued the process.

The only thing, I would not remove mom during the hatching process. Unfortunately, our khaki was a show bird that started a nest before we realized and we had to remove the babies as they hatched to attempt to get her ready for my daughter to show at fair and she abandoned the last egg.

We thought maybe the baby died, but we candled and sure enough a little baby was in there. We do not have an incubator and she refused to sit any longer, so our little Abandon hatched nine days later in a sand bucket under a heat lamp with a humidifier steaming the area. Not ideal, but she made it.

I would wait as long as possible, so you get more of an accurate read that way you bother mama less.

Best of luck!

 

[chickkrzi]

Well looks like my hen has help hatching her eggs.

 

[Amiga]

I don't know much about hatching, but I wanted to send you a hello and congratulations! I pray it all works out well.