Nesting Ducks

[dlatham]

I have 2 ducks that have been sharing a nest of eggs. There where 15 eggs and they are done to 3 now. Not sure what happened them all I would fine one here an there broke. It has been around 35 days and nothing is hatching..I am not sure if these eggs are alive anymore..I use the Cradle light and it has been fertile, How can I double check for life and if bad should I get rid off the eggs... Then how do I get them out of the Broody mode.. they are in?

 

[tayjamieson]

Are your ducks sitting on the eggs 24/7? I had to use an incubator to hatch my ducklings and through that process I discovered how essential the environment is in order for the egg to survive/hatch. I had to have three thermometers (minimum recommendation) that told me the humidity and temperature at all times. It had to be PERFECT otherwise the sweet babies would either not hatch, or wouldn't make it through the hatching process. With all that being said, it may be in your best interest to use a incubator if you really want to hatch some ducklings.

 

[tayjamieson]

Also with your eggs disappearing - do you have chickens or other animals around? A lot of animals/widlife LOVE eggs and will go into the coop and get them. For some reason when I collect my eggs daily from the coop, the chickens will crowd me and if I drop an egg they will immediately start eating it. We also had to fight off possums for a while because they would constantly try to get into our coop to take the eggs. Ducks are somewhat known to not be broody enough to hatch eggs on their own, they don't like to sit on them 24/7 as much as a chicken does.

 

[Muscovy-palooza]

I have muscovy and they are very broody. So much so that when some of the eggs hatched and hopped out of the nest the moms didn't go and care for the ones that had hatched but rather stayed on the eggs that v turned out to be bad. Guess that it may depend on the breed and/or duck. I am 99% sure that the remaining eggs are bad so I tried water candling just to see if there is any movement. Just as I suspected, nothing. Now to figure out how to get the mons off of their empty nests.