Can I leave duck eggs that don’t belong to my female duck in her nest ?

[Chanty321]

I was thinking about buying some duck eggs on eBay and I already have a female duck and I was just wondering if I could leave the eggs in her nest …would she abandon them or even hurt the eggs?

 

[NatJ]

Chickens and ducks and other domesticated birds do not seem to care who laid the eggs.

If your duck is broody (wants to sit on eggs and hatch them), she will be happy to sit on any eggs you let her have.

If she is not broody, she will not want to sit on eggs, but she will probably leave them alone in her nest the same way she leaves her own eggs alone after laying them each day. There is always a chance she might break one by mistake, but she will probably not break them on purpose.

If your duck is not broody, buying fertile eggs is a total waste of money, unless you want to use an incubator to hatch them.

If you want to encourage your duck to go broody, it sometimes does help to have several eggs in the nest. But I would recommend fake eggs for this, because they do not rot or break, even if she never does go broody. If she does become broody, you can put fertile eggs in the nest and take out the fake ones.