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Muscovy ducklings dying before hatching

 
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Hello everyone, I am new to this forum and I am at a loss. I have several muscovy mamas that have laid very large clutches over the past couple of years. The problem is only 1 or 2 out of every 15 or 16 eggs hatch. They are fertile and develop up to a certain point, but then just stop. It is now day 45 of my mama duck sitting, no rotten eggs but no movement either. And she insists on sitting, she will not get up. I just don't know why they are dying in the egg
 
pollinator
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Difficult to say from a distance, but several thing might have an influence:

-Are the ducks lacking some nutrients when laying eggs?
-Are the ducks inbred (chicks too weak to crack the eggshell)?
-Are they nesting somewhere too wet, or too dry?
-Do the sitting ducks have access to water to swim all the time?
-Are sitting ducks often bothered, and leave the nest for several hours?
 
Rachel Crochet
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They have access to water at all times. They aren't inbred. The drake and hen are not related in any way. As far as nutrients I'm not sure. I feed them duck feed from tractor supply. And I also mix it with brewers yeast. Is there something else I should be feeding them?
 
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A thought: you mention large clutches. I don't know how many eggs is normal in a muscovy clutch. Do any eggs poke out from underneath the duck when sitting? If they do, the problem might be that the eggs are moved around and most of them at some point in their development get too cold, and that the ones hatching are the lucky few that happened to remain in the center all along. I've seen this with chickens.

Oh, and welcome to Permies!
 
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Hello Rachel!  

Welcome to permies!


I raise muscovy ducks too!   I really love them.  

The size of a successful the clutch is really dependent on the size of the mother and the outside temperature.    

She can only sit on so many eggs and she will shift them around to try to keep them all at the right temp.  

If you are having cold nights and she is sitting on too many eggs the ones on the outside may be damaged or die.  

She will keep shifting them around to try to keep everybody warm but she only has so much heated area she can create.


One way you can tell if an egg has a living duckling is by it's temperature.  

When she gets off the nest the dead ones will lose their temp quickly but the living ones will stay warm because they are alive.

You could add a little warmth at night to help her get through the process or pick out some and put them in a brooder to hatch so her clutch is a more manageable size.


Next time when she starts to lay keep taking eggs out of the nest until she really starts to set.   I leave 3 or 4 eggs in the nest and take the older ones each day or so.  
You know they are getting serious when the nest has feathers and is all covered up.


Maybe let her hatch out 12 or so if she is a big bird and the weather is ok.   See how she does.
 
Rachel Crochet
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Thank you all for the advice. It may actually be that she is unable to sit on all of them, there are 16 eggs in her clutch and we have had some pretty cold nights up until a couple of weeks ago. I will definitely be try taking eggs out next time. If I get any live hatches I'll let yall know, thanks again!
 
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I also love muscovy ducks. (I'm also quite new here!)    I've not had  great luck keeping my ducks.. they seem to leave, and some have gone to predators. I have only one female and one male that have been great though.She's sitting now, for the third time.  Last two times, none  of her eggs hatched.   None seem  viable at all!  I'm pretty new to ducks, but  none have  even been fertile as far as I can tell!   Makes me  so sad.   I'll give her another week or so on this clutch,  but then I start taking  them away  a couple a day til they are gone.   I've never found any development. Darn it!!
 
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I raised muscovies for 6yrs at my old place, and they bred prolifically at first, then tapered off as they saturated the habitat available to them. The first clutch, 12/13 survived to adulthood. The only about half, and then 2-3/clutch hatched. They did get inbred as I did not cull the young males early enough, and after culling the original male and his male offspring I saw the dominant females start acting like males, fighting and pinning their sisters in the water etc. I introduced a new male from different stock and they went back to their traditional roles, and hatched more like 3/4 of that next brood, and then down to 1/4-1/2 of the 12-14 eggs in each clutch, and this likely correlated with less protected and less deeply bedded nest sites as things got crowded in a converted greenhouse on 1/8 acre. They should hatch in 21days as I remember. This got us to 25+ muscovy ducks at some point, which in addition to a dozen chickens was too much for our space or needs. As space got tight and intraspecies competition increased, they started flying over the fence and nesting under neighbor’s structures and stumps, but then more of those ladies got preyed upon away from our LGD’s protection. We culled males and gave away birds to get down to a dozen or so, with a male for every 4-6 females to reduce female infighting. I never had a problem with too few muscovies once it all got rolling.

One thing I did notice correlating with clutch hatching % was having deep bedding (12”+) inside a greenhouse, which was under large maple trees for protection from heat and cold. The nests outside in bushes, stumps and under neighbors sheds were more prone to predation and temperature swings. Those eggs would also get sat upon by many birds as they tended to lay together in the prime spots of the henhouse. Sometimes our broody female turkey would pull them into her unfertilized clutch and a few even hatched under her.

I would also try adding diverse weeds and other chopped back plants to their forage, give them an aquatic ecosystem to feed from (like a small pond, even if its dry part of the year) and give as much time out foraging as possible.
 
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I recently got two muscovy girls and the same thing happened. The drake isn't related.  I thought that he was infertile. The weird thing was that even after I had taken the eggs away (all cold but the dog enjoyed eating them) the ducks would not stop sitting. Eventually I just had to shut them out of the duck house during the day, but couldn't at night. It took 4 days before they gave up. They both sat, side by side on empty, but beautifully made nests!

They have good food, shell grit, a pond, free range around the garden to forage. I've had ducklings before. They're more friendly than my non muscovies.
 
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I limit my broody girls to 10 Muscovy eggs. I agree with what Samantha Lewis said. I make sure they have access to lots of insulating bedding when the weather is cooler or erratic.

However, also keep an eye on what the daytime max temp is near a nest - a friend's farm was very prone to hot afternoon sun killing the eggs.
 
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I've never had muscovies but I had Khaki Campbells for years. The guy who gave me the eggs told me they can't hatch their own eggs; I found this was true. They need four weeks, and usually predators would get the nest  and sometimes the hen but then one nested right against our house --still four weeks went by and none hatched. But twice I took duck eggs that had been refrigerated and put them under my chickens--I had a lot of broody ones then so I could shift them to another one when the first one hatched her chicks at 3 weeks--they followed the mama hen around and it made for good education for my kids about instinct, as the ducklings would hop into the creek, while the hen would run around the bank fussing--the chicks would not get in the water...
 
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Mary Cook wrote:I've never had muscovies but I had Khaki Campbells for years. The guy who gave me the eggs told me they can't hatch their own eggs; I found this was true.

They tend to be flighty and have had most of their broodiness bred out of them. I keep hoping that if my Muscovy keep hatching and raising them so that they experience having an "almost" real mother, the instincts will reemerge. So far, no.

and wrote:

 They need four weeks, and usually predators would get the nest  and sometimes the hen but then one nested right against our house --still four weeks went by and none hatched.

It is my policy to put a sitting bird in some sort of protective custody with everything she needs. Sitting birds with the exception of geese, tend to just sit, then get off the nest long enough to eat and drink, or in the case of ducks, bath. I use shallow rubber feed tubs as bathtubs for the Muscovy inside their enclosure and add mulch as needed to keep things clean. Just about everything in my neighbourhood thinks ducks and eggs are yummy.
 
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