Why would a mother duck kill her ducklings?

[jmv1230]

I witnessed a mother duck drown 2 of her baby ducks. I managed to rescue one duck by jumping in the lake. She was slowly killing each duckling one by one. Also: what should I feed the baby duck? I've been told by a wild bird food store that baby cereal is okay. That's what I've been feeding him since he's smaller than the palm of my hand.

 

[dmack]

Honestly I would get them on flock raiser or all flock poultry feed. I don't no why ducks and chickens kill their young but it happens a lot. Kudos to you for jumping in to save the poor little baby.

 

[shicks0211]

yep..get him some flock raiser, or if you can't find that some chick starter crumbles. baby food is for babies..lol I'm glad you can save him.

 

[Going Quackers]

Baby food? nah, get some duck starter, flock raiser or last choice chick starter(that you'll need added niacin for)

info for that here...

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/750869/raising-and-caring-for-ducklings#post_10611711

As to the why? who knows, it's not unusual, many mothers heck even people just don't have the right instinct, i have one who did this last year but it was while they were in the egg, whether she thought she was helping or purposely killing, who knows but we no longer allow to set.

 

[pamaircap]

My husband allowed a duck to start sitting on her eggs which we had never done before. So we allowed her a quiet place to stay and watched to see what would happen. She finally had two babies hatch and then one died. Another baby never made it out of the egg before she shoved it off the nest and we discarded it. One more baby made it a day or so and then it died. A couple more didn't make it out of their shells. We chalked this up to natural selection. But the mother was finally done and we cleaned the nest area out and the week old baby was doing wonderful! Then this morning, my husband found the baby dead with a lot of its neck feathers gone and the body mauled. No one could have done it but the mother as they were still secluded. We are heart sick to think we should have taken the babies away to save them! We have raised multiple flocks of day old babies from hatcheries and thought this baby would be different because the mother raised it. We won't do this again! It's to disheartening!