Broody duck advice

[Rosiej]

Hi,
I’ve got a female duck called Dave... (we named him a a genderless ducking).
Over the past several days she has become broody. So far she is very good and sits on her eggs for almost all of the day.
The eggs will be fertile as we have 3 males.

I am wondering what my best options are. Should we be letting her hatch ducklings? Should we take the eggs although they may of started developing?

It would be good to know what additional care would be needed if we were to allow Dave to continue sitting on her eggs. For both Dave and ducklings.

has anyone been in a similar situation?
Thanks

 

[Quatie]

If you should let her hatch the eggs, that depends on do you have the room or a plan for the extra drakes. Rehoming drakes doesn't always work. If you don't want more ducklings, it is definitely better to take the eggs even if they have started to develop and get rid of them. A lot of people don't recommend letting a duck hatch the eggs if she is younger than a year.

If you do let her hatch them, you will want a plan b in case everything goes wrong. Sometimes ducks will stop mid incubating. Others don't take care of the ducklings when they hatch. You will need a place she can be seperated from the flock for a while if she does care for her ducklings. Drakes and other ducks will often attack the ducklings. @Miss Lydia has experience hatching ducks under broody females.

Another potential problem is your female could be an unhealthy broody ducks. Several of mine when they go broody they lose a lot of weight. I kick them off their nests immediately and destroy the nests. It is another potential possibility.

 

[Miss Lydia]

I separate my broody and her ducklings where everyone can see each other but mom has special time with her ducklings usually 2-3 weeks depending on the mama. And my drake isn't allowed to have time with them until then. My flock forages on over a half acre so by the time the ducklings are 2-3 weeks old they can pretty much stay out of the drakes way. At night mama and ducklings have their own "bedroom" inside the coop I make with lattice with plastic poultry fence over it so the ducklings can't get through the holes. It's a lot of work and supervision to make sure everyone is behaving. So there needs to be much thought into letting a duck sit. Having 3 drakes to one female can cause issues in itself and drakes can kill ducklings. And that is something you never know about until it happens. So again taking all precautions is important,