Missing Muscovy Duckling

[Brookenheil]

So this is a strange story and there isn't really anything to be done at this point, but my husband and I are still curious. One of our muscovy hens hatched 2 ducklings out of 7 eggs. When I opened the other 5 eggs to see if they had even developed, they all had fully formed ducklings in them, just dead. On the 2nd day after hatching the 2 the mom took both outside of the hutch to our fenced in 'corral' to get some bath time. When we looked in on them 1 hour later there was only 1 duckling. We looked everywhere inside the hutch and around the corral, but no sign of it. There is no way for any predator to have gotten inside and I don't believe the duckling would have forced its way through the chicken wire (but maybe?). The only 'logical' conclusion we could come to was that mom ate it, though we found no blood nor feathers indicating this had happened. I thought maybe she ate it because perhaps it was 'defective' in a similar way as the dead ones in the eggs.? Does anyone have any ideas/thoughts of what could have happened to this little guy/girl? Any ideas would be appreciated as right now I feel like there might be some sort of Twilight Zone mystery spot in the hutch.

 

[Amiga]

Ducklings can squeeze their way through small spaces....sad for your loss.

Some predators will pull a duckling through a fence.

 

[Ren2014]

Sorry for your loss. It's hard losing one and even more so when you don't know what happened. Did the area they were in have a roof? Could a hawk or something flown in and took off with it?