Mother animals are fiercely protective of their babies, ducks included. These birds will protect their clutch doing almost anything to keep their babies safe and sound, but leaving their eggs does not sound like something that would keep the babies safe.
If your bird laid one egg and then left you’d be right to be confused, this article looks into how and why this happened.
Table of Contents
Duck laid one egg and left:
Mother ducks know to protect their clutch of eggs. The mother birds will sit on their eggs all day incubating them and making sure that the eggs stay at the correct temperature throughout incubation until they hatch.
The mother bird will sit on her eggs only getting off of her eggs for an hour or so in the mornings and afternoons so she can feed, but apart from this, she will usually be found sitting on the eggs for about 20 to 23 hours a day.
Knowing this, the idea of a mother bird laying one egg and then leaving sounds very odd, but it does happen, and there is a good reason why:
All the eggs aren’t laid:
Ducks incubate what is called a clutch of eggs, the clutch of eggs will usually contain three to 12 eggs. The eggs only start to develop when the mother duck sits on them and they are warmed to the correct temperature.
If the eggs are not kept at the correct temperature then they will not begin to develop. The mother bird leaves the eggs alone making sure that she doesn’t sit on them avoiding getting them warm enough to develop.
Ducks can only lay one egg a day, these birds will wait until she has enough eggs in the clutch before finally sitting on her eggs.
If she were to sit on the first egg that she laid it would start developing at a different rate than the next eggs. This will result in different ducklings hatching at different times which would be difficult for the bird to manage
In order for a mother duck to raise her hatchlings in the most optimum way all the ducklings need to be of very similar ages. The mother duck can’t sit on some eggs for 20+ hours a day while running after her already-hatched ducklings.
Thus, the best way to raise her eggs is to lay one egg a day until all of her eggs are laid and then incubate them all at once, have them hatch all at once then start raising them all at once.
What to do:
There isn’t anything that you’d need to do in this scenario, this happens often and is very safe and normal duck behavior.
Ducks have been laying and raising ducklings for centuries without human help, allow the birds to do what they need to do, you don’t have to worry about them.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other duck related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: How Do Ducks Feed Their Babies?, Why Do Ducks Follow Cows?, Why Do Ducks Eat Their Own Poop, Why Do Geese Fight Each Other?, Is A Duck Bite Dangerous?