Fertile eggs after 4 months?

[mishmosh1970]

I have an odd question. I have a female Cayuga duck (Chloe) who used to have a mate (George), but he disappeared about 4 months ago without a trace. Now, George and Chole used to "get busy" quite regularly in the pond, but as I said, George has been gone for 4 months now. This morning I cracked open one of Chole's ginormous eggs to make some french toast, and noticed a blood vessel in the yolk. Is it possible that her eggs could still be fertile even though we don't have a male anymore? We're going to try incubating one to find out. I know nothing about the reproductive cycles of water fowl, but this just seems really odd to me that she could still be fertile after so long without her mate.

 

[faykokoWV]

Was it a blood vessel or a string of blood. Ususally the sign of fertility would be a bullseye appearance to the germal disc (the little white spot) A streak of blood usually just indicates that there was some mild trauma to the ovaduct during ovulation.

 

[mishmosh1970]

Quote:
I guess it was a string of blood. It was kind of globby though, thick enough that I could pick it out with a fork.