Mallards eating carp eggs?

[williom]

Hi, I got a small lake. After spawning in June I noticed a lot of mallard ducks in the area. They seemed to be eating the eggs? Has anyone else experienced this? 

[kevtaylor]

Everythig eats the eggs mate, not seen Mallards doing it but not a surprise one bit.  If you want babies you've gotta grab some of the weed out of the pond as soon as you see the females you want spawning in an area.  Put it in a separate tank to hatch, quite a few waters doing this now which is great and will preserve some cracking blood lines. 👍

[salokcinnodrog]

6 hours ago, kevtaylor said:

If you want babies you've gotta grab some of the weed out of the pond as soon as you see the females you want spawning in an area.  Put it in a separate tank to hatch, quite a few waters doing this now which is great and will preserve some cracking blood lines. 👍

Carp eggs and fry are food for many birds, even insects; tufties, mallards, pochards, dragonfly larvae

 

 

The syndicate manager has put some of the weed with eggs into another small pond on the estate. I had a look last year, definitely some have come through as baby carp.

 

This is one of the fish that we got eggs from:

[williom]

5 hours ago, kevtaylor said:

Everythig eats the eggs mate, not seen Mallards doing it but not a surprise one bit.  If you want babies you've gotta grab some of the weed out of the pond as soon as you see the females you want spawning in an area.  Put it in a separate tank to hatch, quite a few waters doing this now which is great and will preserve some cracking blood lines. 👍

Thanks, great idea. Here is me thinking mallards are nice vegetarians. 

[salokcinnodrog]

12 hours ago, williom said:

Thanks, great idea. Here is me thinking mallards are nice vegetarians. 

Not many ducks are. Weeds, caddis, snails, pretty much anything they can get.