Stop turning early or late if unsure?

Hello and thank you in advance. I recently hatched a few Pekins, and also silkies, RIR, and Spitzhaubens. I use a separate hatcher. My duck egg donor, dissappeared/ was killed by something at some point during my incubation of her eggs. While looking for her I stumbled upon a few of her eggs, and thought I better incubate these in her memory, so I added them in. Now my conundrum: I'm ADD. I can't remember for the life of me what day I put them in. I normally mark them with a date if doing staggered batches but completely forgot with these. So... would it hurt to stop turning a few days earlier? Or should I turn till one starts pipping? I took them out of the auto turner just in case, now just doing by hand. Thank you!

hjalbert said:

Hello and thank you in advance. I recently hatched a few Pekins, and also silkies, RIR, and Spitzhaubens. I use a separate hatcher. My duck egg donor, dissappeared/ was killed by something at some point during my incubation of her eggs. While looking for her I stumbled upon a few of her eggs, and thought I better incubate these in her memory, so I added them in. Now my conundrum: I'm ADD. I can't remember for the life of me what day I put them in. I normally mark them with a date if doing staggered batches but completely forgot with these. So... would it hurt to stop turning a few days earlier? Or should I turn till one starts pipping? I took them out of the auto turner just in case, now just doing by hand. Thank you!

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Well I have never hatched duck eggs before, only chicken. But if it is anything like the development of chicken eggs I know that turning is only completely necessary the first 2 weeks of incubation. But we do continue to turn till day 18 just to insure proper embryo development and circulation. But, I have heard of some people who quit turning on day 14 and still get good hatches out. In my opinion stopping a little earlier would be better than stopping later because those last days before the hatch where the eggs lay still are pretty critical, it's the days when the chick positions and situates herself to pip and hatch, continuing to turn past that point can cause the chick to exhaust herself trying to reposition herself again and again. So if this were my hatch I would candle the eggs and try to see about which day they are on. You can judge by how much of the egg is filled with Chick and how big the air cell is. You can probably look up online pictures of candled duck eggs at different stages and compare. If the egg looks almost all the way dark throughout the egg and all you can see is the aircell, or really close to that size, you can probably stop turning. Make sure to raise your humidity when they get close to hatch too. But you should only start really raising it right before they hatch, about 3 days before they hatch. Also you can try watching the eggs for a while, I usually use a flashlight to really watch, and see if they rock, if they rock or move at all they are pretty close to hatching and should be perfectly fine to stop turning. I really hope some of this will help you, and don't feel bad or anything, things like this happen to everyone, I know this is definitely something I would likely do. Praying for your hatch to be successful, good luck!

How did your hatch go?!