Mothering abilities of ducks

I am wondering about ducks abilities to mother their young. My Australian Spotted hen sat on 10 eggs and on Thursday/Friday hatched out 7 babies.

Sunday morning I found one dead out in th run by the water dish and one dead inside the house.

That afternoon I went out to find ducklings running everywhere outside the duck pen with mom and dad inside throwing huge fits! Who knew ducklings could fit through 1 inch chicken wire I collected them all and locked mom and babies in the house part. That evening I went out to check them and move them and mom into a kennel in the barn. One baby was not looking good at all and died a bit later.

Three left. Two not looking so perky. By Monday morning they were gone and I had one left. It seems to still be doing fine.

Are ducks not good parents? I saw her step on the ones that seemed "down" and wondered if that's what happened to them in the first place.

So, for future reference, should I allow her to hatch ducklings? Is this normal? what could have gone wrong so that i have one left out of seven perfect little ducklings? Should I leave dad in with them? He seemed so porous of his little family and so lonely now

.

Defiantly going with hardware cloth this time. The pen was one my dad originally built for my son when he got It into his head he wanted to catch a gopher and have it for a pet ( thank goodness he didn't ever catch one!) it had stucco wire on it so when I took it over for birds I overlaid it with the poultry wire. I guess it's going to get a redo again.

Hopefully she learned from her mistakes and does better next time. She's very protective of this one baby.