Please Help!! 😥 BEI Duckling not eating and losing weight

[OliveGreen]

Sorry I just realised what a long essay I’ve written here!

Please - Any suggestion you have might help
This baby just keeps crying and crying and getting thinner.
I really want to help it before it’s too late.

 

[Miss Lydia]

@OliveGreen how’s the duckling doing?

 

[DuckyDonna]

Please listen to @Jpat! He knows what he's talking about and could not have said it better!

 

[johntfs]

If it still won't eat what @Jpat suggested, just put some sugar in water if nothing else. That might help keep it alive until it eats. Right now it just needs heat and calories.

 

[Miss Lydia]

So sorry for your loss.

 

[quackiemama]

Oh no!! I am so sorry about the little baby!

 

[DuckyDonna]

That was a lucky save! It’s really wonderful watching them hatch! Nerve wracking, but wonderful.

Hazel’s not quite a bantam, but the lightest of the light breeds. She’s an Elizabeth duck which is very rare breed from Australia, (and she’s actually a bit smaller than the standard). They look a lot like bantam Welsh Harlequins. She weighs about 1.3kgs, so similar to a Mallard.

There was a second egg that had pipped and began to zip, but when I found it on Tuesday it was dead in the egg. I’m not sure if that one may have suffocated before hatching... she was sitting on them quite heavily (not like my Campbell who sort of ‘hovered’ over her eggs once they began to hatch.

She was such an incredibly determined broody, but I guess she just doesn’t quite have the intuitive knack for mothering (yet). Strange, since she was mother-raised while my old Campbell girl was born in an industrial sized incubator at a factory farm!

I've seen pictures of Elizabeth ducks and they are so beautiful! I'm so sorry the little one didn't make it.

 

[DuckyDonna]

thanks so much for the pictures. We don't hear all that much about Elizabeth ducks on here. I was just reading about them and see that they are meat birds. I hope you don't eat them!

 

[DuckyDonna]

Nope most definitely not!!!
My duckies are my family ❤
...and besides Hazel lays the most beautiful green eggs, and plenty of them when she’s not in a broody trance. I’m really not sure why you’d breed a beautiful little nugget like her for meat!

I knew they were from Australia but I thought they were called Elizabeth ducks for the queen, which they are not. "They were developed as a small, fast growing meat breed in 1972". That's according to Wikipedia. Broad chest and round breast maybe were good traits for eating? I think all ducks are beautiful and I just can't imagine eating any of mine.

That's really too bad that Hazel and Herbie don't get along. Maybe in the spring, you could segregate them together and they'd be forced to mate so you could have a nice hatch of Elizabeths! Oh, you probably already had spring right? You're in summer now so your spring must have happened in Sept? Is that when y'alls ducks do most mating? My ducks mate year-round but spring time (March-May) is the craziest time.

 

[chickens really]

Get Momma and baby into a Brooder set up so baby eats the proper feed. That way she will care for it better without the stress of the flock.