Incubation progress of Muscovy eggs

[charlindabob]

If you have fully formed chicks (ducklings) and they die in the shell, it would be reasonable to pin the problem on humidity. I would suggest that you purchase a small food scale that weighs in grams and weigh your eggs and mark them with pencil when you first put them in the incubator. The chick must lose weight while being incubated or else the chick cannot rotate inside the shell. Humidity controls the growth within the shell. Too much humidity and the chick swells up in the shell making it hard to pip and impossible to rotate. You should weigh the eggs weekly and judge the humidity requirements by weight. If you are experienced, you may be able to judge by the air sac development, but a scale has no guess work and they cost under $20 at Walmart I believe.

Now there are other aspects that are just as important as humidity, but humidity is often over looked or is guess work at best. You know humidity is important when you have full term deaths in the shell.

Bob

 

[AnimalQuackers]

You didn't cause these deaths? You simply thought you did right, this is all a learning Experience. And I bet right now, You are sooooo EXPERIENCE that your next batch is going to be a BREEZE. ha ha just like your new ducky/ LOL

Thank you, Lori. Certainly, if it weren't for you and the other kind people who have helped over the past serveral days, NONE of these sweet little babies would be alive today!

 

[charlindabob]

Thank you, Bob. I knew this - I believe I read it early on in this thread, from you! Aren't the eggs supposed to lose 2% of their weight every two weeks? I know I read that somewhere, and I knew it! In fact, when I first collected the eggs and started putting them in the bator, I WAS weighing them (we have a gram scale). I did it for a while, then stopped. Clearly, it is important enough that I should have NEVER stopped!

Am I right that the goal is for the eggs to lose 2% of their weight every 2 weeks?

Michelle

Michelle, Ideally it would be 2.8% per week or 5.6% for two weeks. Chicken eggs I don't worry too much about, but if you want a REAL challenge, try incubating Mandarin ducks through hatch with success! Nothing has to be exact, but I have learned to strive for perfection and even then it is difficult to have a 100% hatch of viable eggs. I have not succeeded with Mandarins or even the easier Muscovies.
An example: egg in grams when first placed in incubator is say 80 grams. Should weigh at week one - 77.76 grams. Weight at two weeks - 75.52grams. Weight at three weeks - 73.28 grams. Weight at four weeks - 71.04 grams. Weight at five weeks - 68.8 grams. I always round off to the nearest gram. So, when the 80 gram egg hatches, it should now weigh 69 grams.

 

[AnimalQuackers]

You can always sell the babies or grow them up til they are big enough and then eat them. Just a suggestion lol. This type of homesteading may not appeal to you.

It does, actually. When I think about how the meat we buy at the store gets there, and what they do to those poor animals in the process, I think I need to become a vegetarian. The problem is, I can't do the killing, and I don't think my husband can, either. I have a friend who owns a 118 acre farm several miles from here, so I could ask him to do it for me. At least then, I know what I am eating had a good life, with good food and fresh air and sunshine and room to roam...and was killed humanely and not tortured before death.

 

[Lacrystol]

ok. that makes sense. I never seen them do this so early, so I thought we were starting too soon. I don't like things to start when I'm not ready, lol. 

Lol it's fine you'll be ok, they have a lot of preparing to do yet.

 

[Lacrystol]

I'm still turning the others, since they're due sat. today would be the last day of turning them. I'm not wanting to turn the first one today, it seems far ahead of the others to me. so i'm not moving that one, just put the candler on the end.

Turning and Candling are two different things. Today should be the LAST day for Turning on your Saturday due ones. Keep misting and everything else just stop turning them. Tomorrow lock them down, but candle this ONE LAST TIME..
If you put them all in at the same time, you should be treating them all the same, don't stop because one looks different? It's OK if he's an early bird, he still needs to be treated the them.

 

[Lacrystol]

I incubate ALL the time, I'm always prepared in case my girls decide to stop in the middle of sitting.

 

[AnimalQuackers]

I'd like a lesson on humidity!

-Kathy

Ditto!

And I also echo what Bob said - I think I echoed it earlier in this thread. You can tell me what to do, and I will do it, but if I understand the REASONING behind WHY I am doing it, I am much better at it and make much better decisions in the future!

 

[yinepu]

Funny I've never seen nor have any of my girls ever asked if they could weigh there eggs. I think I'll just keep learning from them and continuing to study what they do since they seem to have to down.. Lol

they also aren't artificially incubating their eggs.......

 

[yinepu]

Quote:
Exactly... hens don't artificially incubate their eggs.. they do what nature intended .. and even then they have failures because of predators, bacteria, disease or just being clumsy with their eggs...

Once you take the "natural incubation" out of the equation you can fix the issues and one step in doing that is to monitor the eggs by weighing or checking air cell growth

if people are happy with low hatch rates then that's fine for them... but for me personally.. I prefer to have every undamaged fertile egg that I place into the incubator hatch with no issues