help silkie sitting on duck and chicken eggs

[claireylow]

Help one of our silkies has gone broody and is sitting on 3 silkie eggs and 2 duck eggs, when they hatch what do I feed them, as they will all be in the same cage? I have read somewhere that ducklings cannot eat chick crumb? help please

 

[Kadjain]

Ducklings can eat the chick starter but they don't need the medicated kind. It's not bad for them they just don't need it. I have raised ducklings and chicks together and fed them both the medicated starter w no problems.

You need to take one kind of egg out from under her cause duck eggs take a week longer to hatch than chicken eggs. She will abandon the duck eggs to raise the chicks when they hatch. Or you can have her sit on the duck eggs for a week then add the chicken eggs and they will hatch at the same time.

Here is my Silky cross raising her clutch of ducklings that she hatched out. It's so cute to see.

Good luck!

 

[claireylow]

last year we had two baby ducklings hatch, and both died at just a couple of days old, were we doing something wrong, they seem fit and healthy and then we just found them dead?

 

[Kadjain]

I don't know enough about how they died to tell you if you were doing something wrong but I can tell you stuff like that has happened to me too. It's always a bummer when you find them dead especially when it leaves you wondering what the heck happened.
I hope things work out better for you this time.