Young Ducklings are Vulnerable

Every brood study shows that the majority of duckling mortality happens when ducklings are less than 10 days old.

By 30 days of age there is little mortality of ducklings, though fledging is 50-70 days of age..

In my teaching days I made it simple: about 50-60% of ducklings typically die before reaching flight stage.

That mortality is often about equally split – a brood of 9 gets reduced to brood of 5 or 6; the other half is when females (photo below) lose all their ducklings – a brood of zero.

Frank