HELP, HELP I SCREWED UP.. he's still alive

Lacrystol said:

We are into our First week and they don't even follow me any more, I feel SO ABANDONED.. They already know where to go when I take them out side.
Hulk does seems to be doing better as far as keeping up with the gang..

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What an incredible hatch story!

Would you mind sharing your stats? (humidty to start, lockdown humidty, temps, hand turn or autoturn?, how many times did you mist etc.....

Great job!

I would be glad to, well the eggs were not shipped first of all, I did go and pick them up because I hooked up with a member on here who was having a hard time hatching her own. Well being the challenger that I am I told her well let me give it a shot. So we traded a frizzled rooster for 13 eggs. I did my research and read every where call ducks are hard to hatch, so in my mind i thought wow this is going to be one of my bestest challenges... I put them in the incubator right away, seeing how they weren't shipped there was really no reason to let them sit. I treated them EXACTLY like my chicken eggs, in fact I even had chicken eggs in with them. My humidity I kept at 50 to 55 and my temp was about 100 to 101. I do not have a turning so I had to hand turn them. I also put them in a homemade incubator. I used a digital cheep temp gage from Walmart cost about $6.00. I do have a computer fan. So I turned them three times a day 8:30 in the morning, 6:00 at night and again at midnight, of course this does not have to be the same time you used, it works for me because during they day I work and can't turn them then.. The idea is to make sure they get turned 3 times a day whatever time you can and it does not have to be every 8 hours, I just made sure there was at least 4 hours in between each turning. After I turned them I took the sponge that was in my bowl to help with humidity and touched each egg. I used this sponge because one it was already in the incubator so there for it was already warm. I made sure when I touched them that the water dribbled down the egg. Now I was told it takes 26 days for call ducks so I locked my down on day 23 I do not suggest this. Stick with 28 days they MAY hatch early. 4 days before lock down I did not turn the eggs, did not lock them down but didn't turn them, giving them this extra day gives them a chance to get into position so that when you do lock them down they are all set and ready. Of course two of my eggs didn't not follow the rules in this so there for I lost two of them. One was believed to be backwards, that's the one I had accidently opened because I thought it was dead, the other one was definitely backwards and wasn't going anywheres. So that left me with 11 eggs the last one was clear and just didn't develop at all. So I'm down to 10, the day of lock down again I treated them exactly the way I do with my chickens, I raised the humidity up to 60 -65. Now one big scare for some but not me is when you sponge or spray the eggs, whatever you prefer, the humidity will go up, don't let this alarm you because it does go back down to normal, at least it didn't alarm me.. But that was all and soon the little stinkers came out, and did there normally everyday thing, what is that, MESSY. THEY ARE MESSY..... But in 3 weeks, outside they went...they grow extremely fast.. If you have any other questions just let me. If you spray or sponge them like I did make sure you use warm water, that's why I used the sponge that was already in the incubator so I didnt have to worry about having the correct temp when touching them.


Thanks for reading.....