Last year's brooding season was hectic. I wasn't on the ball about monitoring the eggs under my first two broody muscovies, so there was a lot of sneaking in of new eggs and staggered development. When the muscovies left the nest with their new ducklings, I candled the leftover eggs and found several only a week away from hatching, so I finished them off in the incubator. Problem is, I breed my ducks for meat, and I'm not ashamed to admit it is much, much harder for me to process a bird I've hatched myself. My mother had me incubating eggs since I was six years old, so I should have known I'd get attached . . . which is why Genghis and Snafu are now part of my breeding flock instead of in my freezer.
Genghis
Snafu
Unfortunately I do not have the unlimited resources required to keep every bird I hatch in an incubator each year, so I've been much more diligent with the eggs this year, and when Snafu went broody, I was ready. She was allowed to keep 14 of the newest, freshest muscovy eggs, and she went to work with the single mindedness that every owner of a broody muscovy is familiar with. I absolutely love female muscovies' little chirps during this season, and how when they get up off the nest to eat and drink, they walk with that silly little fluffed up low posture and chirrup with every step. My other birds have learned to respect that chirrup, and give my broody girls a wide berth.
Broody Snafu, doing what muscovies do best.
About three weeks in, another of my muscovies went broody. Since we've still got quite a bit of meat in the freezer, I decided to split Snafu's eggs up between them. Annie was going to get three weeks shaved off her sitting sentence, lucky duck. I candled all the eggs before moving some, and they were all developing beautifully. Great job, Snafu!
Two weeks later, Snafu's eggs start hatching, and by the end of the day she has six beautiful ducklings under her. Two days later, Snafu will leave her nest and the seventh egg will wind up in an exploded mess all over my face, clothes, and hair after an attempt to remove it.
I . . . I don't think I'll ever fully recover from that experience.
Snafu with some of her new duckles. I think it's best if we do without a picture of exploding egg aftermath.
I've switched eggs out between birds before, so I knew a delay could happen. But the delay has always been maybe a day or two of waiting; this time, Annie's eggs were being weird. Looking back now, I recall Annie hatched two clutches last year, and each time the bulk of her eggs started developing before sizzling out and dying. I thought it was bad luck combined with my poor egg management at the time, but now I'm wondering if there's something off about her internal temperature or something. She's a diligent broody, so there's no fault to be found there.
Annie is always very excited to help me garden. She is convinced a healthy garden needs to be free of all worms and grubs, and she keeps a sharp eye out for them.
To get back to the point, Annie's eggs (well, one of them) started hatching two days after Snafu's, and it wasn't until towards the end of the week that a fifth duckling had hatched out, and Annie was ready to wander. I was understandably wary of the two remaining, unpipped eggs, and I gently tipped them out onto the leaves outside of the coop for later collection - preferably after I'd acquired a hazmat suit, but I had to settle for a plastic baggie. But by the time I'd come back with the baggie, one of my geese had built up a nest around the eggs and had settled herself in to lay her own egg. I decided to leave her to it, and forgot about the eggs until later that evening.
These are not the same eggs nor goose as in this story, but it does illustrate the dangers of leaving eggs out where geese can find them. They simply can't stand seeing uncovered eggs, and nest-building will commence. Bucket tipping, too, if applicable.
That evening I had remembered the eggs and went into the pen to retrieve them, but all I saw as I was approaching the spot where I left them was one goose egg and a chicken eating a big hunk of goop. Great, the eggs had exploded, and now my idiot chickens may or may not die of rotten egg bacteria.
Except, no. My heart sank - there were two naked, wet, breathing ducklings on the ground, apparently having had the shell eaten out from around them, and they were both bleeding from the abdomen as a chicken finished eating the yolk that hadn't fully been absorbed.
Pardon my language here, but crap.
I snatched them up, leaving my husband to take care of my evening chores, and rushed inside looking for an incubator, a plan that was quickly discarded as I snatched our heating pad instead. I took up residence on the couch with ducklings shoved under my shirt and with a heating pad over my shirt, and I pretty much lived that way for the next several days. The ducklings couldn't uncurl, their head and limbs were uncontrolled and useless, I had no way of feeding them since they clearly weren't in a position to swallow and I am not in any way comfortable with the notion of tubing something so small, and anyway, their necks couldn't extend yet in any direction other than the egg curl. But without having fully absorbed their yolks before a chicken came along and ate the exposed goop, I wasn't sure they'd have any sort of grace period regular hatchlings have in regards to eating or drinking, so I felt like I needed to try something. Once they'd warmed up I mixed boiled egg yolks with warm water - mostly water to keep it super thin - and I'd hold the ducklings as upright as possible while rubbing it alongside their beak. There was no evidence that any of it was making its way into them, if I'm being honest.
I don't know why I bothered trying. It would have been smarter, probably, and far less work and sad desperation to simply call it a loss and snip their heads off with kitchen shears. I don't know how much blood they had lost through their abdomen, and I couldn't tell if anything was being swallowed. They were unresponsive for so long, and how I managed to sleep on the couch with them under my shirt for those few nights without rolling over and crushing them is beyond me. Deep down, I knew what I was doing was dooming these guys to death by starvation, but my rational brain couldn't get ahold of itself long enough to shake the emotion out of it, so I just kept trying, hoping, and feeling helpless. It was awful . . .
. . . And then it stopped being awful.
So, anyway, here are my two little miracle survivor babies. I still can't believe they made it through all that. They're healthy and pinging around like they've never experienced a hardship in their life, and tomorrow I'll be adding them in with their siblings and mothers so they can enjoy terrorizing their own kind, the lucky little goobers.
Hooray for happy endings!
Genghis
Snafu
Unfortunately I do not have the unlimited resources required to keep every bird I hatch in an incubator each year, so I've been much more diligent with the eggs this year, and when Snafu went broody, I was ready. She was allowed to keep 14 of the newest, freshest muscovy eggs, and she went to work with the single mindedness that every owner of a broody muscovy is familiar with. I absolutely love female muscovies' little chirps during this season, and how when they get up off the nest to eat and drink, they walk with that silly little fluffed up low posture and chirrup with every step. My other birds have learned to respect that chirrup, and give my broody girls a wide berth.
Broody Snafu, doing what muscovies do best.
About three weeks in, another of my muscovies went broody. Since we've still got quite a bit of meat in the freezer, I decided to split Snafu's eggs up between them. Annie was going to get three weeks shaved off her sitting sentence, lucky duck. I candled all the eggs before moving some, and they were all developing beautifully. Great job, Snafu!
Two weeks later, Snafu's eggs start hatching, and by the end of the day she has six beautiful ducklings under her. Two days later, Snafu will leave her nest and the seventh egg will wind up in an exploded mess all over my face, clothes, and hair after an attempt to remove it.
I . . . I don't think I'll ever fully recover from that experience.
Snafu with some of her new duckles. I think it's best if we do without a picture of exploding egg aftermath.
I've switched eggs out between birds before, so I knew a delay could happen. But the delay has always been maybe a day or two of waiting; this time, Annie's eggs were being weird. Looking back now, I recall Annie hatched two clutches last year, and each time the bulk of her eggs started developing before sizzling out and dying. I thought it was bad luck combined with my poor egg management at the time, but now I'm wondering if there's something off about her internal temperature or something. She's a diligent broody, so there's no fault to be found there.
Annie is always very excited to help me garden. She is convinced a healthy garden needs to be free of all worms and grubs, and she keeps a sharp eye out for them.
To get back to the point, Annie's eggs (well, one of them) started hatching two days after Snafu's, and it wasn't until towards the end of the week that a fifth duckling had hatched out, and Annie was ready to wander. I was understandably wary of the two remaining, unpipped eggs, and I gently tipped them out onto the leaves outside of the coop for later collection - preferably after I'd acquired a hazmat suit, but I had to settle for a plastic baggie. But by the time I'd come back with the baggie, one of my geese had built up a nest around the eggs and had settled herself in to lay her own egg. I decided to leave her to it, and forgot about the eggs until later that evening.
These are not the same eggs nor goose as in this story, but it does illustrate the dangers of leaving eggs out where geese can find them. They simply can't stand seeing uncovered eggs, and nest-building will commence. Bucket tipping, too, if applicable.
That evening I had remembered the eggs and went into the pen to retrieve them, but all I saw as I was approaching the spot where I left them was one goose egg and a chicken eating a big hunk of goop. Great, the eggs had exploded, and now my idiot chickens may or may not die of rotten egg bacteria.
Except, no. My heart sank - there were two naked, wet, breathing ducklings on the ground, apparently having had the shell eaten out from around them, and they were both bleeding from the abdomen as a chicken finished eating the yolk that hadn't fully been absorbed.
Pardon my language here, but crap.
I snatched them up, leaving my husband to take care of my evening chores, and rushed inside looking for an incubator, a plan that was quickly discarded as I snatched our heating pad instead. I took up residence on the couch with ducklings shoved under my shirt and with a heating pad over my shirt, and I pretty much lived that way for the next several days. The ducklings couldn't uncurl, their head and limbs were uncontrolled and useless, I had no way of feeding them since they clearly weren't in a position to swallow and I am not in any way comfortable with the notion of tubing something so small, and anyway, their necks couldn't extend yet in any direction other than the egg curl. But without having fully absorbed their yolks before a chicken came along and ate the exposed goop, I wasn't sure they'd have any sort of grace period regular hatchlings have in regards to eating or drinking, so I felt like I needed to try something. Once they'd warmed up I mixed boiled egg yolks with warm water - mostly water to keep it super thin - and I'd hold the ducklings as upright as possible while rubbing it alongside their beak. There was no evidence that any of it was making its way into them, if I'm being honest.
I don't know why I bothered trying. It would have been smarter, probably, and far less work and sad desperation to simply call it a loss and snip their heads off with kitchen shears. I don't know how much blood they had lost through their abdomen, and I couldn't tell if anything was being swallowed. They were unresponsive for so long, and how I managed to sleep on the couch with them under my shirt for those few nights without rolling over and crushing them is beyond me. Deep down, I knew what I was doing was dooming these guys to death by starvation, but my rational brain couldn't get ahold of itself long enough to shake the emotion out of it, so I just kept trying, hoping, and feeling helpless. It was awful . . .
. . . And then it stopped being awful.
So, anyway, here are my two little miracle survivor babies. I still can't believe they made it through all that. They're healthy and pinging around like they've never experienced a hardship in their life, and tomorrow I'll be adding them in with their siblings and mothers so they can enjoy terrorizing their own kind, the lucky little goobers.
Hooray for happy endings!
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