Incubation progress of Muscovy eggs

[Dianne88]

For what's worth........Last night was two weeks into incubation for my second clutch of the French White Muscovy eggs.  I weighed, candled and laid them on their side and misted.  Three of the fourteen candled clear and I removed them.  As far as weight loss, three were right on the money, two need to gain one gram and six need to lose one more gram to be where they should be at two weeks with a 5.6% weight loss.  I have incubated dry until a few days ago when I added a bowl, about the size of a pie pan, of water in the bottom of the 'bator. Now, for a while they get hand turned once a day while still in the auto turner, cooled and misted daily.  Trying to keep humidity in the low to mid thirty percent range.

Sounds like you'll have new babies in a couple of weeks
Take pics of your first babies, I would like to see how big they're getting!

 

[MyNewHobby]

For what's worth........Last night was two weeks into incubation for my second clutch of the French White Muscovy eggs. I weighed, candled and laid them on their side and misted. Three of the fourteen candled clear and I removed them. As far as weight loss, three were right on the money, two need to gain one gram and six need to lose one more gram to be where they should be at two weeks with a 5.6% weight loss. I have incubated dry until a few days ago when I added a bowl, about the size of a pie pan, of water in the bottom of the 'bator. Now, for a while they get hand turned once a day while still in the auto turner, cooled and misted daily. Trying to keep humidity in the low to mid thirty percent range.

I'm on day 10 of incubation with my own Muscovy duck eggs! 9 of 11 are veining beautifully. I've read all of this thread as well as many other's, but I'm taking a slightly different approach with my eggs. I will not be weighing them, but I will keep a close eye on the air cells. I am cooling them once daily, but not spritzing. Humidity is pretty steady at 40%, but no less than 35% or more than 45%. I'm attempting to hatch some of my mama ducks egg's, she has not been successful at hatching her own. I did hatch 7 Muscovy's 15 Month's ago, one of those being my mama duck Sweetie. My husband rescued 17 egg's from a nest that was being destroyed....we didn't even have an incubator! So we rigged something up real quick....it was horrible....we didn't know what we doing. Then I found BYC and long story short, we weeded out all the bad eggs and were left with 7, they did get shrink wrapped and we did have to assist all with hatching about 10 day's after being rescued. I'm hoping this clutch hatches....I would really like my Sweetie girl to have some duckling's. She is currently incubating a small clutch of 6 egg's...5 are veining, but on one side of the egg. Could it be that she is not turning them enough? Well, you are about 5 day's ahead of me so I'll be watching this thread closely. Keep the update's coming and good luck!

 

[charlindabob]

My five week old ducklings are just starting to feather out and I have a large enclosed chicken pen 25x50 and I let my ducks out yesterday from their small pen to run with the chickens while under observation.

Well, all was fine for about a half an hour, everyone behaving themselves, so I went in for lunch. BIG MISTAKE. The chickens pecked my little ducklings darn near to death and I lost one during the night. The wheres and whys doesn't matter at this point, it's done. I immediately put them back in their cage and my 13 year old threated all the chickens with bodily harm and I was not far behind. He's not big on killing anything, but he brought me one that he observed and said "cut its head off!". He was so mad at the chickens for killing one and hurting his ducks.

I regret my actions of leaving them alone with the velociraptors (red sex-link chickens), but I can't undo what is done. I have 9 ducklings that look like they have been in a chicken plucker for awhile and have dried blood on them that I'm afraid to wash off as I may reopen their wounds. I am spraying them twice a day with Vetericyn.

Anybody else ever gone through this?

I know I posted this on another thread, but thought I should keep it all together here.

 

[Miss Lydia]

My five week old ducklings are just starting to feather out and I have a large enclosed chicken pen 25x50 and I let my ducks out yesterday from their small pen to run with the chickens while under observation.

Well, all was fine for about a half an hour, everyone behaving themselves, so I went in for lunch. BIG MISTAKE. The chickens pecked my little ducklings darn near to death and I lost one during the night. The wheres and whys doesn't matter at this point, it's done. I immediately put them back in their cage and my 13 year old threated all the chickens with bodily harm and I was not far behind. He's not big on killing anything, but he brought me one that he observed and said "cut its head off!". He was so mad at the chickens for killing one and hurting his ducks.

I regret my actions of leaving them alone with the velociraptors (red sex-link chickens), but I can't undo what is done. I have 9 ducklings that look like they have been in a chicken plucker for awhile and have dried blood on them that I'm afraid to wash off as I may reopen their wounds. I am spraying them twice a day with Vetericyn.

Anybody else ever gone through this?

I know I posted this on another thread, but thought I should keep it all together here.

I haven't gone through anything like this but I can tell you from using Veterycin that it is the best for something like this, I hope the rest pull through, That had to be upsetting to see. Thank goodness I have always had mama ducks to protect her babies from my chickens.

 

[Dianne88]

My five week old ducklings are  just starting to feather out and I have a large enclosed chicken pen 25x50 and I let my ducks out yesterday from their small pen to run with the chickens while under observation.

Well, all was fine for about a half an hour, everyone behaving themselves, so I went in for lunch.  BIG MISTAKE.  The chickens pecked my little ducklings darn near to death and I lost one during the night.  The wheres and whys doesn't matter at this point, it's done.  I immediately put them back in their cage and my 13 year old threated all the chickens with bodily harm and I was not far behind. He's not big on killing anything, but he brought me one that he observed and said "cut its head off!".  He was so mad at the chickens for killing one and hurting his ducks.

I regret my actions of leaving them alone with the velociraptors (red sex-link chickens), but I can't undo what is done.  I have 9 ducklings that look like they have been in a chicken plucker for awhile and have dried blood on them that I'm afraid to wash off as I may reopen their wounds.  I am spraying them twice a day with Vetericyn.

Anybody else ever gone through this?

I know I posted this on another thread, but thought I should keep it all together here.

So sorry to hear you've lost a baby! I didn't put Ricky and Lucy with the chickens until they were bigger than the chickens. It didn't last long before the ducks were pulling out the tail feathers of the chickens. We let our ducklings run the yard as long as someone is out with them because we have hawks in the area. I hope your babies heal up fast! How are your batch of eggs doing??

 

[charlindabob]

OK, I have been spraying my chicken pecked ducklings with Vetericyn and it seems to be helping. Today at TSC I picked up some more feed and saw some Blu-Kote (germicidal, fungicidal) that says for horses and dogs and I thought I'd try that on the ducklings. Now I have purple and white ducks! Someone had mentioned earlier that Blu-Kote wouldn't hurt. One thing for sure, it is pretty easy to see which ducklings have been already treated unlike the Vetericyn where I had to separate the treated ducklings so I knew who was next. Anybody with any thoughts on using Blu-Kote on ducklings?

Also, I picked up some Life-Lytes by Manna Pro. It comes as tablets and has a quart mixing bottle. It is a vitamin supplement and has Niacin (Min. 15,000 mg/lb). Anybody have any experience with this?

 

[Miss Lydia]

OK, I have been spraying my chicken pecked ducklings with Vetericyn and it seems to be helping. Today at TSC I picked up some more feed and saw some Blu-Kote (germicidal, fungicidal) that says for horses and dogs and I thought I'd try that on the ducklings. Now I have purple and white ducks! Someone had mentioned earlier that Blu-Kote wouldn't hurt. One thing for sure, it is pretty easy to see which ducklings have been already treated unlike the Vetericyn where I had to separate the treated ducklings so I knew who was next. Anybody with any thoughts on using Blu-Kote on ducklings?

Also, I picked up some Life-Lytes by Manna Pro. It comes as tablets and has a quart mixing bottle. It is a vitamin supplement and has Niacin (Min. 15,000 mg/lb). Anybody have any experience with this?

No experience with the Life-Lytes but sounds like good stuff. I do have experience with Blue Kote and have used it for many years on all my flock when needed. It does a good job. I do have quite a few old towels and various articles of clothing that have purple stains on them though, and boy it is hard getting it off the skin too. [Mine]. Glad to hear the ducklings are healing up good.

 

[charlindabob]

Well, my incubator is turned off and my second clutch is in the brooder. I have 10 little ducklings. I had 11 eggs make it through the incubation process, but had one DOA at hatch time. The couple of others that didn't make it through the entire incubation candled clear or early death.

I consider this hatch to be a great success. I just now put the last duckling in the brooder. I did have to rinse a couple of the ducklings off as the dreaded goo was drying on them and if not removed would become hard and crusty and could well kill the little ducklings if not removed. No problem though, just held them (not their heads) under a stream of warm running water and gently peeled the membrane off.

I would post pictures but they look EXACTLY like the ones I posted from the first hatch. Remember, all of mine are white which translates to yellow ducklings. My 13 year old commented that he had forgotten just how tiny hatchlings are since we are getting used to the first hatch that are huge already.

It still appears that out of the nine survivors of my first hatch, I have 8 ducks and one drake. Now I may be wrong, but only one is much larger than all the others. Still medicating them a little, but it appears that they all will make a full recovery from the velociraptor chicken attack.

 

[Dianne88]

Well, my incubator is turned off and my second clutch is in the brooder.  I have 10 little ducklings.  I had 11 eggs make it through the incubation process, but had one DOA at hatch time.  The couple of others that didn't make it through the entire incubation candled clear or early death.

I consider this hatch to be a great success.  I just now put the last duckling in the brooder.  I did have to rinse a couple of the ducklings off as the dreaded goo was drying on them and if not removed would become hard and crusty and could well kill the little ducklings if not removed.  No problem though, just held them (not their heads) under a stream of warm running water and gently peeled the membrane off.

I would post pictures but they look EXACTLY like the ones I posted from the first hatch.  Remember, all of mine are white which translates to yellow ducklings.  My 13 year old commented that he had forgotten just how tiny hatchlings are since we are getting used to the first hatch that are huge already.

It still appears that out of the nine survivors of my first hatch, I have 8 ducks and one drake.  Now I may be wrong, but only one is much larger than all the others. Still medicating them a little, but it appears that they all will make a full recovery from the velociraptor chicken attack.

Congratulations! Post pics anyway, love seeing the babies! Post pics of the older ones too, glad they are healing up.

 

[Dianne88]

Pic of my babies