Duckling hatching questions

[mdavison]

Hey guys.
So .... we have a strange situation.
We have a momma duck who has been sitting on her eggs religiously for the last two months. Long story short: yay she finally hatched a baby about four days ago. He/she's doing well. Yesterday, another egg started pipping. This morning is where it gets weird.
I went into check on them, and the hard shell was all but removed, leaving behind that papery membrane. Hm. It was like this for hours. Momma still sitting with him/her.
We waited a little longer, and we took him out to give him a look over. It honestly looked like he was stuck and in a bad position, he was dry. BUT the yolk was still there, small, very small, but there. We gave that membrane a bare mm of a rip to help him release a bit then put him back with mom. The fact is, nothing that I can find on line matches what on earth we're seeing.


Has anyone had something like this happen????

 

[cheezenkwackers]

If you saw yolk then I would give him a few hours. Yes, it is a good sign if he is making noise. If the membrane is all white and dry I would make sure he can breath.

 

[mdavison]

Yeah he looked like he was breathing okay, whistling, moving pretty well. Had a lot of room, just down there that yolk was still there.
OK, I feel way better. I am crossing my fingers this little critter does well, his/her sib is waddling around looking for someone to play with LOL.
Thank you!

 

[FarmerGirl101]

I'm sorry for your loss.

Here are some tips I have that have helped me with mice/rats:

Make sure that there is no spilt feed and all the feed bins are secure and rat proof. If you feed treats I'd say try to do it in the morning as then it should be gone by nightfall. I used to have mice (I know not the same thing) that would go into my coop at night and eat the feed from my feeders so I would try and feed them in the day then remove the feeder at night if possible or just empty it. Barn and feral cats work great to help keep the mice and rat population down. The cats will eat the smaller rats and keep the population in check.

Definitely do secure your coop. That was the biggest thing that helped for me. Make sure that all your doors can close easily with no gaps. If you have a sliding door for you run I'd advise you to have two latches, one where ever you want and the second one towards the bottom of the door so they can't pull on the door and squeeze through. Add latches to all your doors including your nesting box doors so that way if a mouse or rat were to try and squeeze through they can't. To prevent them from going into your coop, wire mesh works well. Chicken mesh doesn't help as rats and mice can go through. 1/4in or smaller wire mesh should be able to help.

Good luck on securing your coop

 

[mdavison]

Thank you both for the condolences. We were super bummed.
Yeah, the feed has definitely attracted them. And having it left out during the night has been an issue.
That is definitely the first thing we latched onto. The issue is that the darn things chewed holes and dug up through cracks in the cement. So we got some hardware cloth and have been putting that in. I think that come next spring we're going do a gut and redo. The funny thing is we have 4 chicks who have been fine. I think that's why there was so much false security.
I would rather just deter them then have to "deal with them". So I'm gonna save your very sound advice and refer back to it.

 

[cheezenkwackers]

Sounds like momma was trying to help. I have assisted hatch ducklings and chicks by removing only shell, no membrane, in a ring where they would normally zip. Then, all they have to do is push and break the membrane. Sounds like your mother duck had the same sort of idea. I think what you did was wise.

 

[mdavison]

Okay thats what I was wondering, if the momma duck was pulling that shell back. I was a little worried she was getting weird about things.
How long would you wait before getting more worried? What might we look for?
The little guy was whistling loudly, so that was a good sign.

 

[cheezenkwackers]

How is he today?

 

[mdavison]

Sorry it took so long for me to respond the week went from bad to worse.
That duckling was gone the next morning. And the morning after that the week old duckling was gone.
Score.
We think rats. Long story short, we're now looking at how to both get rid of the rats and secure the coop.
We live in farm country and they come in from the fields.

Yeah. Not happy. We saw 6 rats last night. So today we're researching the best ways to get rid of them. We live in the middle of farm country and they come in from the fields.

 

[cheezenkwackers]

So sorry they didn’t make it . I have mice and at least one rat as well. If you find a good solution I would love to hear it.