Discussion Forum - Northstar Chevelle Club

Now that's what I call co-habitating! 

Like this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYbxc4el3O4

They do it year after year; mom checks around for predators then stands on the ground below the nest and quacks away.  Out they come one after another some landing on the others.

They are born one day and leave the nest the next day never to return. That’s why we check the nest every day, so we know when they have hatched.  When you open the door to the nest they all play dead, you can reach in take one out of the nest check it out and put it back in and mom is ok with it. She has learned over the last month that we are not predators.

I do keep the BB gun ready, it’s usually enough to drive off the bad guys, the worst are the raccoons. They will climb the tree and reach into the box to grab a chick, when you tag one of them they don’t like the 15 foot drop, make a real thump. They hobble of and return within an hour, we sometimes stay up on the night after hatching, they leave early in the morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhDQRK048Rc&feature=related



dashboard wrote:

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We have been doing this Wood Duck stuff for some years. The hen will lay one egg a day sometimes two; she only spends about 15 minutes in the box lays the egg then returns to a nest in the pond. This allows the other hen to enter the box and drop her egg. They do spat over the nesting boxes at first but once the egg laying starts they tolerate each other. I think they tolerate each other because the duckling mortality rate is very high, so the more there are the better the odds; more on that latter.

We check the eggs everyday while they are laying, not just to count them but more importantly we need to know when the last egg is laid. Then they start incubating the eggs. About 28 days after that all the eggs will hatch on the same day. We try to check the boxes at the same time every day during incubation so mom becomes accustomed to our interference, as soon as she hears the ladder she leaves the box
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We do this because we want to know the day the chicks will leave the nest. On that day all the predators show up. How they know is one of the mysteries of nature. But on that morning we will have Bard owls, foxes, hawks, coyote and raccoons and even the cat next door are hanging out around the back yard.

We are not trying to change the course of Mother Nature or disrupt the food chain; we just want to give the ducklings half a chance to reach the pond.

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Got your CO2 10 shot ready ??

I have seen that type of guard used on smaller boxes for smaller birds, but these Wood Duck houses are 30 inches tall. I don’t think the hen would be able or willing to enter the house with that type of guard.
The recommended guard is more the traditional rat or squirrel type guard, but then it difficult to inspect the house. Good thing is the raccoons only harass the nest after the chicks are born and still in the nest; and they only do it once.