Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Wood duck camera house

Can the good Dr. fix the youtube stream?

Dr. Luke was there a hatch of the wood duck eggs yet?

I'm following this also! Great stuff.

So the stream has been going, but the link changes because I've stopping the stream at night so my son can have extra bandwidth to work with for his job. If you follow the old link to my YouTube page, the stream is still there.
As far as the nest goes, three hens were laying in the box and so it became a 'dump nest'. This means there were too many eggs to brood. We counted, and there were 48 eggs. We took out all but 18, in case one hen would take the clutch and brood it. But none did. I've been waiting for the past week to be sure, but this weekend I'm going to reset the box. We did keep 12 eggs from the first 48 and have them in an incubator my neice had used for a school science project. They've been incubating for 2 weeks so far. I candled them yesterday, and all are developing. It is near impossible to raise wood duck chicks, so we plan to release the hatchlings onto the pond when they hatch. With a little luck another hen will adopt them with her own hatch.

Learning again. Didn't know what candling was but now I do! Sounds like the newer high powered LED flashlights have replaced the old candle light method?
I also learned that you have to turn your duck eggs 180 degrees 4-5 times a day or the embryo will not form properly?? Someone has to stay home and turn the eggs in the incubator? Amazing!

Thanks for the update and the work to try to keep more wood ducks in the wild.

Sadly no wood ducks showed up this morning!

also FYI, I went back to the old link and it is not working. Maybe it is set to private or something? Share the link again please.

That is the link to my channel. When the stream is live, it's at the top left.

Wood duck box stream channel

Thanks Dr. Luke! SO therapeutic to just hear background nature sounds and watch those eggs relax in the duck hut.
I saw the wood duck pair on the ground early this morning for a little stroll but they are not interested in my duck hut. Maybe I need to lure them in next year with a nice big pile of acorns on top of the duck house? What is their weakness?

There are inexpensive incubators that automatically turn the eggs. https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/p...Er6LD8AIVtDizAB1DkAsiEAQYBiABEgIXZ_D_BwE

esshup,
We have used those incubators before but you get a much better hatch rate with the GQF Sportsman incubator. It’s much more expensive but we have hatched chickens, pheasants, bobwhite quail, and Hungarian partridge with ours. If anyone decides to go this route I would absolutely recommend the GQF brooders as well. Each brooder holds approximately 100 quail to 6-7 weeks of age. It takes the majority of the work out of the process. I believe 2 years ago we ended up releasing about 1500 quail, 75 ringnecks, and 50 Hungarian partridge. Hope this helps someone.

Heppy, thanks!!!

I hatched some quail in mine and couldn't believe how small they were - they squirted through the wire that I had used to make a cage that I had raised pheasants in the previous year.

The incubator I've been using turns the eggs every few hours automatically.

I wish it was easier to raise wood duck chicks than my research suggests. Anyone have any experience to share? I'd love to be able to get them bigger than hatchling size before setting them loose. Natural survival rates are only around 30% anyway.

Without doing research I heard that they need to drop to kick start their digestive system like they were falling out of the nest box.

I'm sure duck experts can help me? Sadly the wood ducks didn't decide to hang around but I do have a nesting mallard pair. Well, not a pair, a three some??

2 questions.

1. Every day 2 males paddle around the pond and hang out waiting for the lady to arrive. Presumably she is nearby in the woods sitting on a nest. Is it common to have 2 fathers in the duck world? They both seem equally dedicated to the task at hand. One of them likes to stand on top of the wood duck hut which from a distance always gets my hopes up that a Wood Duck may be settling in only to zoom in with my zoom camera lens from the house and see the green head...

2. Lately the female and male are hanging out during the day time hours too. Does that means the eggs failed and mom some how knows that? Maybe racoons cleaned out the nest?

I'm giving up on Woodies so I may install one of those mallard nesting tubes over the water next spring so the animals can't raid the nest every year. The last 3-4 years the mallards did their nesting thing but we never saw a baby mallard yet.

My $$ is on the coons. The nesting tube is a good idea.

So I wanted to give a quick update on the camera house. It is in fact streaming. I went about 3 weeks with it down, due to several weeks of heavy rain leading to a leak into the ethernet line splice. I had to run 100' of ethernet and splice it to another 50' to reach the house. I guess those 'water proof' splices aren't as dry as I'd hoped. Anyway, had to wait for it to dry out enough to dig up the splice and line and retrench it in. I had already reset the box (i.e. took out all the eggs and put in new wood chips) a couple weeks before. Lo and behold, when I restarted the camera a new hen was already brooding! We think on about 20 eggs! Not really sure on the hatch out date, but maybe in the next week or so. The stream goes down occasionally, so if you go to my YouTube channel, the live stream link is shown there, even if it goes down and then I put it back up.

Regarding the first batch of eggs, we did get some to hatch out:


You can see the 'egg tooth' on the end of the beak of this one chick

So we attempted to release them into the marshy edges of the pond as a group, but think most didn't survive. Even with a hen helping them, reported wood duck chick survival rates are a dismal 30%. BUT..one chick walked out of the weeds and climbed onto my wife's foot a few days later. So we took it back into the house and have been rearing it ever since. Nickname is "Pip" (which is the sound he or she makes frequently).
It has taken to following my wife around the pond when she swims:




We are hoping to release Pip with the next hatch we see jump out, so they'll be 'adopted' by the hen. I'll keep you posted.

Pip may have imprinted on your wife.

Totally agree. We are hoping if he can join in another group of hatchlings, he'll choose to stay with them. I was even thinking of tucking him into the nest box with the new hatchlings in the camera box so he can jump out when she calls them. She usually will leave to feed for a little while, which may give us a window to work with.
It'll be hard. Knowing how tough the 'wild' is on little ducks, and having him/her around for awhile now.

From last night:

Maybe keep raising it safe from predators and let it "free range". When it gets the urge to leave it will, and you know you did all that you could do for it.

I purchased both Woodies and Mandarin Ducks from Sea World San DIego and raised them in a large pen in the back yard, I had to pinion the Mandarin offspring and the Woodie offspring got to leave when they wanted to.

Very neat, Dr. Luke. How many boxes do you have total? I’ve counted at least 7 different groups of hatchlings out on the pond here. Group size has been a low of 3 and a high of at least 12. Thanks for the report.

Bryan

We have 7 boxes, three plastic Duck Huts, and 4 wooden. All are being used, but we had a lot of dump houses this year. I think it's my last year hen hatchlings coming back here, but lacking experience...and space. I might put some more houses up. We enjoy watching them, and woodies are nice clean little ducks.
As I sit here on my dock, soaking my feet, Pip sits on my right, and I can see LMB minnows playing in the shallow water to my left. Good stuff! 🙂

Thanks for sharing the pics & info! Love woodies.