Losing broody mamas!

lovesgliders

Songster
8 Years
Apr 2, 2011
366
8
111
Maine
I am wondering if anyone else has the problem of their ducks ducking out (pun intended) and going broody in a mystery place?

We live in the midst of some very swampy woods, and let our ducks free-range during the day. I lost my blue swede girl two months ago when she disappeared without a trace into the swamp. We looked for days. A month later, we found her skeleton and the broken egg shells, dragged around.

Then my black east indie girl did the same thing! We looked all night. In the morning she had tired of setting and turned up. We never did find her nest.

Now my Welshie has done the same thing. I am so frustrated and depressed. She disappeared two days ago. There aren't many predators here (I live on an island) and the birds I have lost to raptors (admittedly only chickens) always leave behind a very vivid kill site, with shocks of feathers. We can't find the Welshie or a kill site.

As if three broody ducks weren't enough, while all this has been happening I had two girls actually go broody in a GOOD place: in their pen! They hatched out 18 ducklings between the two of them.

What am I doing to raise such broody ducks? Does anyone else lose their broody mamas this time of year? Should I not let them out of their pen any more? I feel like a failure... these are perfectly healthy, beautiful ducks that I have doted upon, and I hate to think of them sitting in the woods waiting for an owl to find them, but I can't find them!
 
Don't feel bad! Anytime you have birds that free-range, you're going to have these things happen and there's no way you can prepare for it. Last winter, I lost 2 ducks without a trace before I noticed a Bald Eagle hanging around!
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I lost a whole flock of Dutch Hookbills and Khaki Campbells who free-ranged during the day a few months ago - I had 6 girls who started disappearing one by one, off into the woods to sit on nests that I couldn't find.
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We don't have too much of a predator problem here either (we had about 6 raccoons last year, but they were swiftly dispatched by my husband and we haven't seen another one since!) so I didn't think too much of it.... until the drakes started disappearing int he early evening before we put them to bed for the night too!
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We finally heard a scuffle one evening and caught a pair of Barred Owls in the act. We knew we had a pair of them that nest behind our barn - I hear them all night long - but they're known to have small talons and only go after relatively small prey, so I never thought that they would go after fully-grown Campbell and Hookbill ducks! Out of 6 birds that were killed/went missing, we only recovered 2 bodies, both from the night we caught them in the act, and those two bodies just had tiny puncture wounds in the neck and beneath the wings - hardly a feather out of place besides those tiny little punctures into the neck and lungs!

We did find one female duck still alive and sitting on a nest of 16 eggs out in the brush pile, so we locked her up in the pen with the rest of the birds and transferred her eggs to the incubator - almost all of them hatched! So, at least I can replace the flock with the youngsters.

I'm much more careful now about locking the birds up EARLY in the evening, and a vigilant about going egg hunting in the morning and the evening to collect every single egg to keep them from accumulating a nest. It's all I can do. I thought about keeping them locked up and safe all day - but what sort of life is that? I'd rather have them free-ranging and happy, even if I occasionally lose some.
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Thank you for your response, Sweetfolly. Still no sign of my dear Kenna, I fear she is gone for good. :(
I know all about the owls being swift & efficient killers, we saw and interrupted one that nabbed one of our guineas. He had a single tiny pinprick through his neck but was dead as a doornail, dead before he even hit the ground. It's insane what skilled killers owls are.
 
If I were you, I'd make sure to have plety of nest sites available that were in appropriate and safe areas. I was free ranging mine, chickens and ducks, until I started having too many losses to wandering dogs. We rent and the property is basically fenced for cattle/horses and I'm not going to pay to fence 12 rented acres for birds. So, I've limited their area to about 1.5 acres.

I make sure that any "hidden" nests are emptyied and destroyed as I don't want to lose a bird to that. Make sure that you have enough nests that they feel safe in.
 

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