Everyone will tell you how prolific muscovies are. "If you have a pair, you'll soon have dozens," they'll say.
But this makes at least the third time that our gal has failed to hatch a single egg. (Not always her fault - Jasmine found and ate all the eggs once.)
This time she laid about ten of them, in the chicken coop. She sat on them all night, wandered around off the nest most of the day, and then finally abandoned them after a week or so.
12 comments:
You can see it in her eye. She's mad, mad I say!
(Blogger ate my first comment, bad blogger.)
Maybe you could show her some videos of ducks sitting on their eggs for more than one day. I've read that visual cues work for gorillas, maybe they'll work for a duck too. Would it be worth it to incubate the eggs?
Every mother gets bored sooner or later. Or, maybe she was questioning her role as a stay-at-home mom...I go through that rather regularly.
I raised two babies left behind by a muscovy when I was a little girl... of course she did keep track of the approximately 14 other little ducklings.... I think perhaps floridacracker is right...
Ugh - don't like to ask this but where is Papa Muscove?
Looks like you may have to incubate or find a new mama.
I had a hen once that wouldn't sit her eggs - if I wanted them to hatch I put them under a brooding hen - got any hens around?
I think she has ADD and you should put her on Ritalin. After all, if she can't sit still, she must be medicated!
You take some truly wonderful photographs! A real treat for the eye. Thanks!
We had a Muscovy once whose clock was ticking really bad but we didn't have a male Muscovy so...she would lay piles of eggs and sit on them until they would rot if we didn't take them away from her. Then a mama cat we had, who had a litter of small kittens, met with an untimely death so Ms. Muscovy decided that those babies would do well enough so she took them over and would try to sit on them etc. Well, you can guess how that turned out. So, we took those away from her to raise ourselves. She was so pitiful wanting a baby so we went to the flea market and bought her a little baby duck and she was ecstatic! It wasn't the same breed but she didn't care, she was so happy. And she never tried to lay eggs and hatch them anymore.
What a look in that eye! It reminds me of a look my mother sometimes gets in her eye. No she's not mad - just sometimes very determined! And no she's not bad either - she's a good mother. She raised seven children.
(That is an amazing story about the duck and the kittens isn't it?)
Maybe she knows something about the world over-population problem?
Great photo!!!
FC, You may be right!
RD, it's supposedly tougher to incubate duck eggs... I think they need more moisture than chicken eggs. But we don't really *need* new ducks so I haven't looked into it much.
Hick maybe she saw what happened to the hen & chick last year... (They got eaten by coyotes.)
Lacy, 14 is a lot!
DK, papa muscovy is the one who thinks he's my boyfriend. :)
Nio you may have something there, LOL.
Thanks Suldog!
Annie that is hilarious!
CB, I don't know... she has that look a LOT! :)
OW, there's a duck overpopulation? :)
She's rejecting motherhood. She wants her M.B.A.!
Loved the story about Ms. Muscovy and her baby duck.
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