I have 3 adult ducks (one male two females) and 5 four-months old duck(lings). They're crossbred and they don't seem to be able to fly like real mallards. They range freely inside my fenced backyard.
Now here are the strange parts that kind of scare me. This is going to be a bit lengthy, please continue only if you are interested- 1. just last month, one female laid around 13 eggs in a nest built by her and she brooded it, everything seemed to go fine but day-by-day her eggs started to turn bad, real bad that i could detect the smell just by passing near her nest, so one by one i had to throw all her 13 eggs.
2. Since she was just halfway in her brooding period, i felt pity for her and i exchanged her last bad eggs with four of my nearly hatch time incubated eggs. Out of this, one miraculously hatched and she was the most active and playful duckling i have ever seen. She was about 1 week old when i had to go away for a week due to work. when i returned, i witnessed the most painful sight - the duck pond i created has receded its water level to nearly half, which i never expected to happen considering the regular rain, and the strong duckling was lying there dead in the pond. I assumed she jumped in the half empty pond and she could not get out again (which is still strange as the pond is not deep and she was quite the athletic). It's totally my mistake to not let the water source run and the guilt i have is tremendous. 3. Now, the strangest thing that creeps me out, i found a lot of fallen pieces of long feathers in the pond. I thought theyre just fallen off from their swimming activities. But today i noticed that the three adults had their wings feathers missing. None of the other full grown ducklings had any wing feather missing. I used to spend hours, days just watching them but i never ever saw them pulling their feather wings that hard they'd fall off, not evenein their mating activity. There is nothing to suspect of human or predators activity. Of all the seasons we're approaching winter and why would they do that? I'll try to add pictures if only requested as they're quite timid to catch.
Now here are the strange parts that kind of scare me. This is going to be a bit lengthy, please continue only if you are interested- 1. just last month, one female laid around 13 eggs in a nest built by her and she brooded it, everything seemed to go fine but day-by-day her eggs started to turn bad, real bad that i could detect the smell just by passing near her nest, so one by one i had to throw all her 13 eggs.
2. Since she was just halfway in her brooding period, i felt pity for her and i exchanged her last bad eggs with four of my nearly hatch time incubated eggs. Out of this, one miraculously hatched and she was the most active and playful duckling i have ever seen. She was about 1 week old when i had to go away for a week due to work. when i returned, i witnessed the most painful sight - the duck pond i created has receded its water level to nearly half, which i never expected to happen considering the regular rain, and the strong duckling was lying there dead in the pond. I assumed she jumped in the half empty pond and she could not get out again (which is still strange as the pond is not deep and she was quite the athletic). It's totally my mistake to not let the water source run and the guilt i have is tremendous. 3. Now, the strangest thing that creeps me out, i found a lot of fallen pieces of long feathers in the pond. I thought theyre just fallen off from their swimming activities. But today i noticed that the three adults had their wings feathers missing. None of the other full grown ducklings had any wing feather missing. I used to spend hours, days just watching them but i never ever saw them pulling their feather wings that hard they'd fall off, not evenein their mating activity. There is nothing to suspect of human or predators activity. Of all the seasons we're approaching winter and why would they do that? I'll try to add pictures if only requested as they're quite timid to catch.
