Duck not sitting on eggs!

[aeadams]

We have

pair of Mallards, and she now has 25 eggs in her nest!! And she's not sitting on them! Is this completely out of the norm? This is the first time for her to lay eggs, as she's still pretty young. She hasn't rolled any out, and her nesting box is full! How long should I leave them in there? Or should I take them out? I don't know what to do!

 

[Pyxis]

So at 25 eggs and only one duck, some of those are at least 20 days old, and at that point they're not likely to hatch as they start to lose viability at ten days.

It's not unusual that she's not sitting, ducks will lay without intending to sit. Eventually her hormones will likely trigger her to sit, but what I would do is take those all out and mark new eggs going forward with the date they were laid and remove the oldest ones as they hit ten days old.

Make sure you have a plan for what you're going to do with all the babies too - if she had managed to set and hatch 25 ducklings, would you have a plan for what to do with all the babies? What I mean is don't let her have any more eggs than ducklings that you could keep or had other plans for.

 

[aeadams]

Thanks for the advice! I took the eggs out yesterday, and we're going to start fresh today, numbering them as you suggested. We'll see what happens!