Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Well the good news is that Pear has definitely gone broody. We have been getting duck eggs since the end of last month and about a week ago we noticed that Pear was spending a bit more time each day in the nestbox. We started to leave her eggs in the box instead of collecting them as usual, and also put 12 more in there (from ones previously laid). Three days ago, we spied a lot of down in the nest. This was a very good sign as females Muscovies pull down from their breasts in order to line their nest and so help keep the eggs warm. (You can see some of it in the far side of the box in the first photo, the second photo is a picture of Pear herself.) And then today she came out of the house first thing as usual but then after a swim and a feed and a drink went back inside.
Muscovies spend several days getting their nests sorted, lining them with more and more of their down and continuing to lay and only then to they start to sit properly!! The only problem was that we began to worry that maybe the nestbox was not actually big enough for her to sit in on what was now a clutch of SIXTEEN eggs! We decided to get a larger box for her although knew we ran the risk of scaring her off the eggs altogether if we interfered too much. When birds go broody, some are better than others at staying broody whilst others are very easily spooked and so abandon their eggs altogether. In the wild, if you scare a bird off its nest it is very unlikely to come back. Some chickens however, stay broody no matter what you do to them, even if they have no eggs. We have to take our broody turkey Katherine off her eggs every day in order that she goes out to poo and eat and drink. If we did not she might well starve herself to death!!!
Pear was a little unsettled by having to 'move house' so once we had everything sorted we then shut her in her new cardboard box nestbox to hopefully encourage her to stay! Later in the afternoon we opened up to see her calmly sitting on the eggs and so felt confident to leave the door open. She came off the nest at corn time but returned within the hour so... fingers crossed! We should have sorted a new nest for her much earlier but time will tell if we have got away with this or not. Watch this space!!