Ok, well my mama duck has been sitting on 14+ eggs and she is due to have them this weekend or next. ( not sure which, i dont know when she started setting exactly) Well I check on her everyday becuase I cant wait for ducklings! She has been glued to the nest, it has been VERY rainy lately. She is in a large kennel that is protected by wooden boards on one two sides, another kennel on the other, and it is open in front. All this is wrapped securely in more boards, rope, and a tarp over head and on the sides to top it off. Well yesterday and today I have noticed an... odor when I poke my head it. It smells faintly like an egg has busted. Could that be it or could it just be musty hay? I havent been able to change it out for over a month becuase she has decided to be little miss priss. All I can do is add more hay for her nest. Any advice? Also, she has been... a little more active since tuesday. When I peek my head in she usually just quacks at me, today she stood up, and keeps re arranging her eggs. Does this behavior signal that it is almost hatching time? or what? Help please! ( I wasnt sure if this should go here or in hatching and incubating, since mostly I am referring to mama's behavior)
well I dont have alot of experience with this but it sounds like if any are alive they are getting close but the smell would likely be a rotten egg in amongst the bunch. Our cayuga hen incubated her eggs well this year but unfortunatly they seem to lay more eggs than they can sit on (she had 16) and consequently when they rotate the eggs some always end up to the outside and cool down. Of the clutch only two eggs hatched, and strangly enough it took 31 days for them to hatch (we were getting quite worried after the 28th day which was suposed to be a saturday and they hatched on the wensday following the hatch date) so dont hisitate to give her more time on the nest to see what happens. anyways thats my feble experience so far, the bigest lesson's we learned were that she knows what she is doing for the most part, and to take some of the older eggs away once she starts sitting (10 or 12 egg's probably would have been a much better number to work with than 16)
Well the little stinker got off her nest totally today, so im a little upset about that. She was sitting on 18!