They are very good at hiding, I had one disappear once and didn't notice she was gone till time for lock up, I looked high and low for her and found she had some how squeezed under the ramp going into their house and had 7 eggs under there, It is not very high and how she managed to get there is amazing, I had a hard time getting her out, once I did I blocked that off, she must have done the limbo. Haven't had one nest outside since they use their stalls mostly. Do you sell your ducklings?I've got 56 wooded acres with a seasonal pond and two creeks. By the time I even find my muscovy nests, they're already most of the way to hatching. If I took eggs in the house to incubate this time of year, I'd be minus a dh. Last year we incubated (2 incubators) for about 6 months non-stop, and brooded on the living room floor in a kiddie pool. That's half a year of stinky, peeping (although adorable) mess. If I started in January with inside babies, he'd hit the road, for sure. As it is, we're working with most of our available time on putting in brooder housing so we don't have any in the house again. Unfortunately, I've already broken that promise and have 4 two-week-old pekins in the bathtub.What? They needed a new home.
I can generally find all the other duck eggs, but I'll sometimes find a clutch of chicken eggs under a tree on a random walk, and I almost never find the muscovy nests unless I purposefully follow a suspicious hen back into the briars. Right now, I know there is one muscovy nest under the rabbit hutches, but that's only because I did a once-a-year purging of the empty feed bags. Otherwise, I would have never known. They're sneaky, these ones. Although they're very friendly, they do like to have their secrets.
