AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

To all you poultry people out there, here is a mystery for you. Friends of mine in the floods last year found 2 female Muscovy ducks on their dam that had been washed down the valley with the water. They then got a drake from a friend, and within 2 weeks the drake was dead. This happened again with the next drake they got. Nothing was eating the drakes, they just stopped eating and then died. The 3rd drake they got survived and now lives quite happily with his ladies. They have the run of a 20 acre paddock with 2 dams that they swim on and eat mostly things that they find on their patch of ground, and live with the native ducks and wild water birds that also visit. This year both ducks laid eggs and 8 ducklings hatched in total. After about 2 weeks the little ones started to not eat the duck food he would take down for them, and then they started to die one at a time, until only one baby survived. It is now almost at adult size. The ducks dam is really full with tadpoles, and they are toad tadpoles. The female ducks are starting to lay again, and the owners were wondering if anyone had any ideas about what could have killed off all the ducklings. Any help would be appreciated.

Could the flood waters have washed in chemicals from someware else? I read some creeks in Qld were badly polluted from chemicals and fertilizers from farming stocks maybe this is what has happened at your friends?

Cane toad tadpoles are poisonous.
If any more die I'd open up the stomach and look for any evidence that they may have eaten some, or eaten anything else that may be toxic.
Otherwise you may have to send one for a post mortem examination & pathology.

The other alternative is to try & pen the duck and ducklings and keep them away from the dam initially.
Good luck!

One other thing to check is the food, was it all fresh or left over? Could it have been contaminated? Was it the same lot fed to all?

Thank you all for your ideas. I have told Rex ( the owner) to pen them for the next lot of ducklings and make sure the food is fresh. I have a high suspicion it is the toad tadpoles because I read somewhere that even as tadpoles they are poisonous, but I wasn't sure if muscovies ate tadpoles. Hmmmmm. Thanks heaps though.