Advice About A Duck?

[Vashti]

Our primary school courtyard is home to a duck. She has built a nest in a flower bed and has 5 eggs. She has been sitting on them for 35 days. This morning she has taken one of the eggs and seems to have put it in the water trough she uses. The first few days after laying she was inattentive to the eggs but for the last few weeks is constantly on them. Are they going to hatch? It's very sad to see her sitting and sitting in the rain.

[BillyMalc]

Googled 'duck eggs hatch' and found this. Could this be of any use?

 

Ducks usually incubate their eggs for about 28 days, but this is an instinctive response to an egg and birds will also incubate egg-shaped objects, such as golf balls and model eggs. They will lay infertile eggs if males have not mated with them and will lay fertile eggs if males have successfully mated with them.

 

The ducks will continue incubating the eggs until the eggs hatch. If your duck has been incubating the eggs for more than a month, there is a good chance that the eggs are infertile. Infertile eggs will never hatch. It is worthwhile checking if there is a duckling in each egg by holding the egg up to a light.

 

If the eggs are infertile, please remove them so that the duck can go back to feeding and leading a more productive life. Many zoos and aviaries remove eggs from a female bird and incubate them elsewhere. If the species is till in the breeding season, the female will mate again and lay another batch of eggs. This has enabled some species to increase their numbers, as zoos and aviaries enable a female to produce more young than she would normally achieve in the wild.

[phoebejo]

Does this duck have gentleman visitors? Because if not then the eggs she laid will be infertile. Ducks & other birds haven't quite caught on about the facts of life and will often lay eggs, go broody, sit on them and wait for them to hatch only to give up eventually, disappointed

 

Incubation for ducks is 28 days but if she got off quite a bit initially you can easily add a few days onto that.

[Vashti]

Does this duck have gentleman visitors? Because if not then the eggs she laid will be infertile. Ducks & other birds haven't quite caught on about the facts of life and will often lay eggs, go broody, sit on them and wait for them to hatch only to give up eventually, disappointed

 

Incubation for ducks is 28 days but if she got off quite a bit initially you can easily add a few days onto that.

Thank you - she has lots of gentlemen visitors , well, a couple. Shall we leave it a couple more days then do the holding egg to light thing? Why would she have put one in water trough?

[phoebejo]

You'd need to candle the eggs in the dark. If they're infertile it's obvious, otherwise at this stage you should see a solid mass above the air sac. Shine the light from the blunt end of the egg.

 

I've no idea why she'd drop it in the water. Birds are strange things. Between them, my two gold Brahma hens are sitting in seven eggs. Today there are only six, goodness knows what they've done with the other one

[grace]

Thank you - she has lots of gentlemen visitors , well, a couple. Shall we leave it a couple more days then do the holding egg to light thing? Why would she have put one in water trough?

 

 

Someone told me (it may not be true at all) that Ducks can only mate in water?

[scotslass]

Someone told me (it may not be true at all) that Ducks can only mate in water?

 

I'm not sure that they need water, but they certainly prefer it. When I kept ducks, they always mated in the pond. In fact, don't they need water to keep their eggs moist while they're incubating? I wonder if this duck has enough water to do that? Does she have a place where she can actually float and put her head under water?

 

The other problem is what happens if she does hatch ducklings; ducks are notorious for leading their ducklings into danger - is the water source "safe" for youngsters? Ducks don't seem to herd their young as hens do - they just waddle off and the ducklings have to follow...and that can mean the ducklings drown if they end up in water where they can't get out by themselves (before their adult feathers have grown, I mean).