Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Wood duck camera house

Here is an update on the wood duck house with the camera in it.
Working very well! Here's a few pictures:









And here is the live feed from YouTube:
Perridise Duck box
https://youtu.be/mYC8cqQQGKc

So here is the link to this years stream in the duck box: https://youtu.be/hn68jOc5N54

A hen started laying eggs ~ 4-3-21. And there has been a second hen sneaking in and adding her egg every day also. From what I could see this morning, 9 eggs are in the nest so far. Most action is in the mornings, from sunrise to 10 a.m. I'd expect full time brooding (nest sitting) starting next week.

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.

Love it. We have 4 or 5 pairs this year and they are presently using the hatch boxes I put in our adjoining swamp next to the pond.
Last year, we had 3 hens that had 18 total between them. We are hoping for a repeat performance this year. I just hope the eagle that has been showing up does not develop a taste for them. Great pics. Thanks for sharing.

All my wood duck boxes were checked out this year and new shavings put in. I probably should have replaced one but the day I worked on them it was snowing and blowing hard and I didn’t feel like messing with it. I think I’ll add a couple more next year. Unfortunately I didn’t get around to installing my camera set up either. I spent some time watching birds last night, there were a couple dozen geese, same amount of mallards, some mergansers and buffleheads. No woodies seen yet. Thanks.

Bryan

So we went ice free yesterday...and saw 5 pairs of woodies today! Let the box picking begin..

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.

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.

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.