This year I have ran into a problem with my Muscovy hens producing ducklings. In one nest, something got most of her eggs, leaving only four. Of those, only one duckling hatched and the other three eggs appear rotten. In the second, four ducklings hatched out in close order, but nothing from the remaining 16 or so eggs. My experience is all the eggs which are going to hatch do so within about 12-hours and whatever eggs are left won't. Both went back to sitting on the eggs after I took the five ducklings away. Third hen has just now started to sit on her nest.

My two drakes are about four years old. Could they be the problem in being too old to properly fertilizing the hens? Time to replace them with drakes from the five ducklings (which are in a cardboard box and heat lamp brooder on my kitchen table - you get away with a lot when you are a bachelor)?

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), April 22, 2001

Answers

Hey, You might try and get some dummy eggs and when your hen starts laying you can replace the eggs with the fake eggs. Then once she has laid about 6 eggs or so you can place the real eggs back on the nest and remove the dummy eggs. This will start incubation of all the eggs at the same time and then they should all hatch within the same time period. Your hen may have got off the rest of her eggs when the first few started hatching and then the rest of her clutch would not hatch.

-- Dave (david__gibson@hotmail.com), January 30, 2002.