Duck hatch-a-long october/november!!!!!! come join!

peachncrm37 said:

If you are talking about not knowing what to do with the hatchlings just put them in your brooder. If you don't have a brooder get a tank/storage tub/cage or whatever you have for them and get a heat lamp.

Walmart has them in the DIY section for $10-12 heat bulb about $6

Click to expand...

No, I mean the other eggs that are incubating.

malndobe said:

It's a Hovabator, started out hand turning and after about 3 days of that said forget it and bought a turner Just installed it last night and everyone is happily tilting back and forth.

When you incubate different batches to they have different lock down dates? Or do you not do a lock down or ?? I could go to hand turning later and only turn the ones that need it, or take half the rails out and let the chicken eggs keep turning while they ducks are hatching. My only concern with that would be the different amounts of humidity required at different times in the process.

Click to expand...

I used to hatch eggs every week in one incubator. There never seemed to much of an issue with it. I just put the eggs that where hatching on the side; or if there where a lot took the turner out and hand turned the others.

Duck eggs do better when hand rotated unless the turner has the eggs laying down. For some reason turners make them upside down.

I don't really do a lockdown date but my bator brings the humidity and temp up fast when I open the bator.

I would make sure that each batch gets rotated the amount of days they are supposed to. The important time to not open the bator is after they have cracked the shell because you want the humidity to stay up.

So yesterday my power went out for about 2 hours while I was at work, and when I came home today judging by how far off the oven time was it had been out for about 3 hours.

What are the chances the ducklings will survive this, and any suggestions to combat it if it happens again? I put a light weight blanket around the incubator, just keeping the air holes open, and adjusted the thermostat accordingly, so at least if the power goes out again it will slow down the heat loss. Any other suggestions?

malndobe said:

So yesterday my power went out for about 2 hours while I was at work, and when I came home today judging by how far off the oven time was it had been out for about 3 hours.

What are the chances the ducklings will survive this, and any suggestions to combat it if it happens again?  I put a light weight blanket around the incubator, just keeping the air holes open, and adjusted the thermostat accordingly, so at least if the power goes out again it will slow down the heat loss.  Any other suggestions?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure about how else to keep heat in there other do the same with the blanket! How far along rur eggs again?

LoveToFarm said:

I'm not sure about how else to keep heat in there other do the same with the blanket! How far along rur eggs again?

Click to expand...

They are on day 7. Still developing, 4 of the 5 I had put in my "little red spot but no veins yet" row have veins today but I need to google what the blood ring looks like, I think one of the others that already had veins may have that :-(

malndobe said:

They are on day 7.  Still developing, 4 of the 5 I had put in my "little red spot but no veins yet" row have veins today but I need to google what the blood ring looks like, I think one of the others that already had veins may have that :-(

Click to expand...

Blood rings can look different but definitely google it. Most literally look like a ring of red sometimes with flecks in it but I've had embryos die and just separate weirdly as well.

The eggs should be fine, read this section under power outages:

http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/2902/2902-1090/2902-1090_pdf.pdf

Says just to keep them above 90 you can use candles, blankets, something else is rice bags. Fill socks with uncooked rice and toss them in the microwave for 5 minutes. That'll help keep the temp up but be careful if you use that method the rice gets hot so you may want to try 2-3 minutes or something.

malndobe said:

So yesterday my power went out for about 2 hours while I was at work, and when I came home today judging by how far off the oven time was it had been out for about 3 hours.

What are the chances the ducklings will survive this, and any suggestions to combat it if it happens again? I put a light weight blanket around the incubator, just keeping the air holes open, and adjusted the thermostat accordingly, so at least if the power goes out again it will slow down the heat loss. Any other suggestions?

Click to expand...

Small stretches like that without power shouldn't do much harm to them. Some broody hens will leave the nest for a few hours everyday and their eggs hatch out just fine. Do you know what is cause the outages? The power to my incubator went out yesterday I think during the night. I am trying find some other way to incubate them. I checked a few of them and they are still alive so I have hope that most will make it.

malndobe said:

They are on day 7.  Still developing, 4 of the 5 I had put in my "little red spot but no veins yet" row have veins today but I need to google what the blood ring looks like, I think one of the others that already had veins may have that :-(

Click to expand...

I have some blood rings on this forum back a couple pages!

I'm guessing on how long the power was out, it was to the entire house not just the incubator. I also don't tend to heat my house (live in S CA) so it's fairly cool. I turned on the heat yesterday then adjusted the incubator to keep the temp correct so between that and the blanket hopefully it will help. Unfortunately I work during the day so if the power goes out again there is nothing I can do about it.

I definitely have some blood rings :-( I don't know how many yet, I spent time looking at photos on the forum last night until was past bedtime so I'll candle all of them tonight. Of the 6 I spot checked 2 had them. I originally set 25, 2 look like they never started, 3 more look like they developed for a day or two then stopped. So even if I loose 30% of the rest I should still have about a dozen that keep going. Not great, but I'm a beginner at this so ...

Guess this means I can start incubating more chicks than originally planned.