I came home from work tonight and just spent the last hour looking for a missing duckling. It was born two days ago. The momma duck and baby have been in the barn and before I left for work I had put the other female and male duck in the barn also as I don't get home till late and it was going to drop below zero tonight. The area the ducks were in was about 20ft. x10ft.. No cats could get in so I don't know what happened. I looked every where. the momma was very upset and she too was looking and calling. Would the other two ducks have killed it? I feel so bad for the mom as she is so upset !!! If the duckling is gone how long will it take the mom to get over it. I can't bear to see her looking and calling for it
maybe a rat got it??? I have lost ducklings to rats, stoats etc because they can squeeze through small gaps to get to their prey
I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions. My heart just goes out to you and to Momma duck. I had one lose a couple of her babies (out of thirteen!) when they were three weeks old. She stood outside her house after the other ducklings were in and just kept quacking and quacking until nearly midnight (for several days). I would finally shoo her in with the other ducklings and stand outside for awhile until I thought she had given up for the evening. It was soooo sad. And of course we just want to cuddle them and say it's going to be all right, but most ducks just aren't much for cuddling and human sympanthy. I know you've probably done a really thorough search, but when ours were brand new, a couple somehow got stuck behind the duck house into an area we couldn't imagine they could squeeze into. They weren't peeping or anything so it seemed miraculous that we finally found them there. There are just sooo many hazards for those little buggers. TRY not to feel personally responsible. It sounds like they had a nice safe place compared to how things would be in the wild.
