New Australian Hatching Mystery Egg at Home

[Bens-Hens]

FYI, I got a 2m roll of that non slip mat from K Mart for about $2, handy stuff to have.

 

[hokankai]

Do you need to provide him with grit since he is eating foods besides starter?

 

[chickenlover135]

Awwwww! he is such a cutie!

 

[aart]

Great pics!

 

[pogmobum]

Looked at this website wondering about the progress of my chicken eggs, but WOW!!! I literally only signed up so that i could say ur story was so interesting and kept me up until 12.50am reading it to find out how it turned out, that is with skimming through some random chat. I live in ireland and have fallen in love with this website in one night hope basil is doin alrite had to throw one of my pekin frizzle eggs away 2nite due to a small hairline crack that happened while posting :-( the others are very porous and dont look fertile im at just day 3 and first candling so far so im keeping them incubated. Fingers crossed.

 

[drumstick diva]

People have used candle wax to cover minor cracks in a shell and sometimes it works very well.

 

[pogmobum]

Thanks that will be very handy for the future, the egg looked a little different from the others and just had a floating yolk so i dont think it had any chance, when should the yolk stop floating to the top wen you turn it? I couldnt find information on this??

 

[JerseyHen]

What a great story and adorable duckling! I just read all 547 posts, couldn't stop. I am amazed at your ingenuity, dedication, patience, and caring, making the hatch of basil possible!

 

[Teloka]

My ducks are called Jemima and Silhouette!

Those are two super cute names! Silhouette is an awesome name too!

As a replacement for the paper towel you could try using puppy training pads and if he picks at those, you can use shelving material over top.

The puppy pads will stop the liquid from wetting the box.

Basil and you!

Oooh, okay! Thank you so much! I will have a look for the training pads next time we are out. At the moment I'm still going with the paper towels, but he is definitely still pulling pieces off and trying to eat them, and I was wiping up some spilt water with a tissue and he ripped a bit off that too; I had to drag it back outta his bill! He just eats everything and gets into everything! He ran right in under one of our cabinets and came out covered in cobwebs and I had to pull all those off too, and he seemed so disappointed I wouldn't let him eat them. To keep the box dry too I put in a flat out plastic bag, so it stops the moisture from getting through even if it goes through the paper layers, but the training pads and grip mat sound like they'll be better if I can get them!

FYI, I got a 2m roll of that non slip mat from K Mart for about $2, handy stuff to have.

Awesome! Unfortunately our nearest KMart is an hour away (Yeah Rural Living!) but I'll definitely try to get some if I see it. Thank you!

Do you need to provide him with grit since he is eating foods besides starter?

I probably would have done, but he's got some duck starter food now, and I think there is probably grit in that. He also picks at a few stones and some sand when we are out in the garden, so perhaps that is some grit too if he wanted extra?

Looked at this website wondering about the progress of my chicken eggs, but WOW!!! I literally only signed up so that i could say ur story was so interesting and kept me up until 12.50am reading it to find out how it turned out, that is with skimming through some random chat. I live in ireland and have fallen in love with this website in one night hope basil is doin alrite had to throw one of my pekin frizzle eggs away 2nite due to a small hairline crack that happened while posting :-( the others are very porous and dont look fertile im at just day 3 and first candling so far so im keeping them incubated. Fingers crossed.

Awww, welcome to the website! I'm really glad you enjoyed Basil's hatching adventure! Basil is doing great, he's sitting on my shoulder right now napping away while I type, hehe. I'm really sorry to hear about your eggs, like someone else said some candle wax or even apparently clear nailpolish can be used to cover cracks? I haven't done anything like that myself, but there are plenty of posts about that sort of thing on the forums, and the community is very helpful! I hope that you get some fluffy babies out of those eggs!

What a great story and adorable duckling! I just read all 547 posts, couldn't stop. I am amazed at your ingenuity, dedication, patience, and caring, making the hatch of basil possible!

Aww, thank you so much!! I'm just so happy that he made it out so well, he is such a super fluffy adorable baby, and I hope I can raise him to live a long and full life!

 

[Teloka]

Updates! Easter Saturday


Brooder Updates: Basil seems mostly happy in his new brooder, especially now that he has a mirror in there. However a friend warned me that Halogen lamps can be dangerous and cause skin cancers or eye problems in humans, although I don't want to take any chances. I didn't realize there was so many different types of lights really, durrr, but now that I know I will be swapping Basil to a new lamp as soon as I can. He is not sleeping through the night still, and last night at about 5am I heard him jumping around and came out to check on him, and he cheeps constantly, but he got demoted to the lounge room instead of our bedroom because he was keeping us awake with the peeping, and we thought he might be happier out in the lounge room if he couldn't see us. At least we are getting more sleep, but I will keep endeavouring to see if there is a way to make him happier at night.


Food/Diet Updates: Yesterday in the garden Basil caught and ate his first insect! A little green grasshopper bounced off the lettuces while he was foraging around in them, and he chased it and caught it and gobbled down the whole thing. Then he proceeded to chase a few ants, and a few flying gnats, but I don't think he enjoyed them as much because he gave up after one of each. He loves his duck starter feed, although he makes a huge mess of it by walking it all over the place, even more than the old food. He kept walking his water everywhere too, so I tried the hole-cut-in-lid-of-cottage-cheese-container idea that I saw on another thread, and for now that seems to be working quite well! He is foraging and eating (or attempts to eat) almost everything he finds around on the floor of the house, even if I don't want him to; from crumbs to cobwebs to tissues.

Paper Towel Problem: In frustrating news, he has increased his bad habit of nibbling the paper towels in the bottom of his box and does it now almost constantly if I leave him in there, and because everything is shut for Easter, I'm not sure what I can do about it until Monday or Tuesday short of simply removing the paper towels all together but I don't know what else to put in. He rips off pieces of the paper towel really fast and wolfs them down because he knows I do my best to grab them out when I see him do it, which causes him to cheep rather grumpily when I succeed. He's so adamant about it, I wonder if there is something missing from his diet that the paper towel provides (no idea what) but that I could give to him in healthier way? I'm going to make him some toys, in case it is some sort of boredom induced behaviour, although he does it immediately when I put him in his box even after having him out for a play. I'm really concerned about this, especially because he's so little I'm sure it can't be good for him to be filling himself with paper towels.

Physical Growth Updates: He is getting better at climbing and precision jumping now. From the floor he leapt up onto my foot-->knee-->lap while I was sitting! He also jumps up small piles of fabric to nestle down in the top and climb all around, and then he jumps off small distances and runs super fast to chase our feet. When I open the front wire on his brooder, he shoots out like a rocket! I might try to get some footage of these things, because it's really cute. I will be measuring and weighing him again tonight to see what his growth has been.


And a final note, sort of unrelated to the other categories; I know a duck can't be house-trained because they lack the appropriate muscles, but I decided to try and teach Basil to 'go' every time I put him on a certain piece of paper towel. And he has been! Either I'm timing his trips to the towel perfectly, or he's sort of understanding the concept and able to do something about it, because almost every time I put him down and give him the command, he wriggles his tail and toilets there, then leaps back up into my palms for his reward! (big snuggly cuddles under my chin)


No photos today, but I took some nice ones of my Indian Ringneck parrot Loki this morning, so I may post them tomorrow instead so that he doesn't feel too jealous! For an update on Loki, he is learning to 'go through a hoop' at the moment, although the hoop is more of an a-frame until I get him a proper little hoop.