Animals have the instinct to take care of and raise their young, animals will also be very aggressive and will attack anything, or anyone, that tries to attack their young.
But sometimes, mother ducks will kill their babies, but why would this happen? This article looks into it
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Why do mother ducks kill their babies?
A mother duck killing her ducklings may sound like a horrific sight, but it is something that happens, here are reasons why your domestic duck, or a wild duck, will kill her babies
Stress:
Watching a mother duck take care of and protect her baby birds is a wonderful thing to see.
In contrast, one of the worst things to see is a mother duck killing her baby ducklings, but this does happen. The reason why this may happen may be that the bird is stressed.
A duck will kill her ducklings if she is stressed over the fact that there is a lack of resources around her. A lack of resources will make raising her duckling difficult or impossible.
An example of a lack of resources is a shortage of food. If a mother duck realizes that she doesn’t have access to enough food to where she can ensure that her ducklings will all be able to eat well is then the bird may kill one, or all, of her ducklings.
This may seem barbaric but the mother birds would rather kill their babies than have them suffer, killing the ducklings is the better option in the bird’s eyes.
How to help:
You can quickly get the mother bird to stop trying to kill her baby birds by figuring out why the mother bird is stressed and rectifying the problem.
If the bird and her ducklings don’t have access to enough food then you’d need to increase how much food you serve the birds.
Doing this will make the mother duck feel well off and well-prepared to raise all of her ducklings.
Making sure that the birds also have access to clean water sources is also important. Ducks and ducklings need to have constant access to bodies of water to swim in and drink
Health issues:
Health issues can also be the reason behind a mother duck killing her ducklings.
Ducks can tell when other ducks are sick or have some sort of ailment.
If there is something wrong with a baby duck, then the mother will kill it as soon as she realizes that the bird is sick or has an issue that will keep the duckling from leading a normal life.
Ducks also know that predators are more likely to attack sick and injured birds than birds that are healthy.
A mother duck knows this and would rather kill off her baby birds early on before a predator arrives to kill the bird.
Killing the baby duck early on keeps predators from targeting the ailing duckling and then attacking the rest of the family.
How to help:
If you’re raising ducklings, and you notice that the mother duck is trying to kill a duckling because there is something wrong with the bird, then you have the choice to let nature take its course or you can intervene.
If you let nature take its course then the mother duck will kill the duckling and move on to raising the rest of the birds.
If you choose to intervene, then you would have to take full responsibility for raising the baby bird according to its special needs.
This may look like feeding the bird if the bird can’t do this itself, helping the bird clean its nares, or helping the bird swim. This will likely take up quite a bit of your time so be prepared.
Do mother ducks eat their babies?
While it’s true that a mother duck will kill her babies, the mother won’t proceed to eat the baby birds after she kills them.
Ducks will not resort to cannibalistic behavior like other birds sometimes do. Ducks may be omnivores but they will not eat each other
After killing her duckling, the mother duck will leave the area and leave the duckling there. The duckling will be eaten by a predator if a predator comes by, or the bird will decompose if no predators come to eat the bird.
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 Does A Mother Duck Feed Her Ducklings?, Why Do Ducklings Follow Their Mother?, Duckling Wobbly, Baby Duck Throwing Head Back, Duckling Laying On Its Back
