ChickenTenderNow
In the Brooder
- Oct 11, 2020
- 17
- 19
- 23
New to ducks and ducklings but our 7 month old recently adopted female duck hatched 6 ducklings last week in Colorado and she and her mate (our only other duck) seem to have been terrific parents.
But we got our first snow last night so I asked my neighbor to go see how mom was managing to keep her babies warm since she never has used the duck house ever, except while laying on eggs.
Our house sitter said everything looked good and mom was calmly sitting on them around 5PM as far as she could tell. But when my neighbor went to check around 8 she only saw two ducklings with mom. She searched and searched and finally found the other four duckling bodies in the very shallow kiddie pool (about 2 inches of water).... but upon taking them out, discovered that they were all headless!!
Our run is a 16 by 20 fully enclosed coop that nothing has gotten into for 10 years! The bigger birds are all untouched. So what smallerish predator would do this and leave all their bodies in the water? Or could the Drake have changed his mind and done this?? There are no signs of digging or even disturbance my neighbor said. She noticed one space between fences where something smaller could have maybe gotten in and out. We removed the two surviving ducklings to indoors and locked all the chickens (who share the run) up. The adult ducks are super not human trusting/friendly and hate their house so we just had to let them be. They are pissed of course, but fine this morning.
Attaching a pic of the only conceivable space anything could have gotten in.
But we got our first snow last night so I asked my neighbor to go see how mom was managing to keep her babies warm since she never has used the duck house ever, except while laying on eggs.
Our house sitter said everything looked good and mom was calmly sitting on them around 5PM as far as she could tell. But when my neighbor went to check around 8 she only saw two ducklings with mom. She searched and searched and finally found the other four duckling bodies in the very shallow kiddie pool (about 2 inches of water).... but upon taking them out, discovered that they were all headless!!
Our run is a 16 by 20 fully enclosed coop that nothing has gotten into for 10 years! The bigger birds are all untouched. So what smallerish predator would do this and leave all their bodies in the water? Or could the Drake have changed his mind and done this?? There are no signs of digging or even disturbance my neighbor said. She noticed one space between fences where something smaller could have maybe gotten in and out. We removed the two surviving ducklings to indoors and locked all the chickens (who share the run) up. The adult ducks are super not human trusting/friendly and hate their house so we just had to let them be. They are pissed of course, but fine this morning.
Attaching a pic of the only conceivable space anything could have gotten in.
