Caught on Camera!!! Duck egg thief!

[Baylor]

I have a couple females laying in a nest every morning and everyday I get home they have eggs taken from the nest. They are broken but not completely gobbled up. This has been a mystery for a full week now. I do let my ducks free range during the day to swim in the pond and clean so their cage was open. They are penned up like fort knox at night. Only duck I have lost during the day was to a gator and now I check the pond everyday and get them removed immediately

so far this has worked. I assumed at first it was a snake until I ran over the partial open eggs while mowing the yard. So then I was off to next assume a raccoon - odd to be hunting during the day and odd to not eat the full yolk once opened. My cameras finally magically started working again last night so I sat down today to find my culprit. I was shocked to find out what it was.....A black crow. Plain as day it walked out of the kennel holding the egg - then dropped it - opened it with its beak - ate then flew off in a matter of 5 mins. I wish I knew how to pull that image off the DVR and post the thief!


I am not exactly excited for my ducks to go broody just because she sat the nest for almost 3 months to never hatch a single egg and finally got off the last 5 eggs last week because I cleaned the hay in the nest (it was disgusting!). Now it was her fault she had a beautiful nest and was being a very good mama but she got greedy! She was in her last week of sitting the nest and decided to steal all the hay in the cage and build the Taj Mahal of nests literally towering up like 2 ft and buried her old nest with new hay - then stole all the eggs from another female and made a new nest on top. So all the eggs on the bottom went cold and died (19 were mature and close to hatching

) but we got nothing. I think the next bunch were not fertile as she was very young in age so only a few developed but all died eventually never making it to hatch. So as you can see I dont have the tolerance for her to be broody again although I want her to be a good mama one day here and she will be. I am letting nature takes its course so if she goes broody again right away - sobeit just not looking forward to it.