Baby muscovy ducks

Our Muscovys have been producing eggs since spring and now, of all times, is when they decide to hatch them out; they certainly picked a funny season those silly little quackers. With fall just around the corner we still have enough time for them to grow, the only problem now, keeping walking bait away from the barn cats.
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As soon as they hatched the father duck wouldnt leave the coop, I thought it was just some nice gesture to the moma but boy was I wrong. So the next day I walked in and gave them some feed, then, out of nowhere, the male duck bends down and snaps up a little baby duck by the head.

WHAT THE!!

So after a little research I found out this can happen, the male might be trying to stay in his hierarchical position, so any new male competition is lunch, regardless of whether its his babies or not.

The interesting thing of all this is, one day, the moma duck looked like she had left the kids with the other duck, well call her auntie. I thought to myself (how nice), it almost seemed like some type of companion parenting, after all, it does take a village, right.

But soon I realized something was off. Whenever moma duck came around, auntie would hiss, then  start biting and I could tell auntie wasnt letting moma near her babies.

This must have been happening for a while as when I separated the babies from auntie, they chirped away very unhappily. Auntie did not want to give up those babies, she hissed at me, bit me twice and fluttered in my face with her wings. Im starting to wonder if maybe she doesnt think shes stealing them, maybe she thinks there her own for some reason?. not sure why all this happened, but very interesting to watch the drama unfold.

In the picture here is moma duck and babies. Moma is a blue eyed, all white Muscovy, with a very friendly attitude. Her sister on the other hand,......

The little yellow one was just stepped on by our new goat, it was terrifying.
I thought she was a goner. But she literately dusted herself off, pushed her wing back into place and went off hunting for bugs with the rest of the family. Not even a sign of hurt or shock. I figured Id give it a day or two to really know how she was doing and so far, shes a trooper.

The old nest. As soon as the young ones hatched she gave up on the old eggs.

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