Recent content by willowbirdks

  1. willowbirdks

    Taking ducklings out of the incubator?

    We have a runt. Is that what was going on with yours? Our little guy seems to have failure to thrive, though he is hanging in there...
  2. willowbirdks

    Taking ducklings out of the incubator?

    Ours seem to keep going and going. We started hatching on Friday night and just had two more tonight. (And several in between - we're up to 12/19!) If you hear peeping, maybe you should let them go? I don't really know, of course, but if they are alive then that seems hopeful. I also saw an...
  3. willowbirdks

    Taking ducklings out of the incubator?

    Oh, they must be getting so big! Glad to hear the early introductions to the other birds went well. We are doing well. Our total for the weekend is 12 hatched, 3 with external pips, and 4 with nothing. I guess we will just let this go on until nothing has happened for 24 hours... Every time we...
  4. willowbirdks

    Colors and genetics in ducks?

    Interesting. I have no experience with WH but I do have one adult duck who feathered out with more color than he showed as a duckling... He went from yellow fuzz to what we have called silver spots all over. So that's a good point that what we're seeing now might not be permanent. It's just that...
  5. willowbirdks

    Colors and genetics in ducks?

    I have no Welsh to contribute chocolate genes in this case, thougn. I think PP was just trying to illustrate how they can feather out differently than the fuzzy duck stage, which come to think of it I have seen that... I do have one fully mature Ancona drake that is silver (or something gray...
  6. willowbirdks

    Colors and genetics in ducks?

    Just wondering if anyone understands how coloring works in duck genetics. We have one very lightly marked silver Ancona drake, one heavily marked black Ancona drake, one black Ancona hen, and three very heavily marked black Magpie hens. The Anconas are from a good, pure stock. The Magpies are...
  7. willowbirdks

    Taking ducklings out of the incubator?

    How are yours tonight? Anybody else hatch during the day?
  8. willowbirdks

    Taking ducklings out of the incubator?

    OK, it's crazy that your little guys made it through that power loss... Maybe it proves my husband's theory that it's not such a precise science as we all might hope, though I'm not going to tell him. ;-) All your hatchlings growing big and strong now? And I also hope you never have to do...
  9. willowbirdks

    Taking ducklings out of the incubator?

    Bill sticker-outer, lol! We have a few that are playing hide and seek with bills. We had 18 eggs in the incubator, though! So far 8 have hatched successfully, one seems sickly but hanging in there... 5 more external pips, so I'm sure we'll be getting up to check in the night!
  10. willowbirdks

    Duck egg gone wrong?

    I think you are right about him popping a vein... It ended up being completely glued into the shell, just miserably sticky and unable to make anything happen. We pulled back some of the sticky membrane, and it stuck to the q-tips, cotton balls, paper towels, etc over the course of the afternoon...
  11. willowbirdks

    Duck egg gone wrong?

    We are right at Day 28 with our duck eggs, and had two hatch out successfully last night. But this egg... He externally pipped at around 10pm last night, and hadn't made much progress since. He has developed a strange dark ring around the air sac, but he's moving and peeping. You can see that...
  12. willowbirdks

    Taking ducklings out of the incubator?

    Thank you! Hearing that yours took 4 days makes me feel a lot better... Can you tell it's our first time?
  13. willowbirdks

    Taking ducklings out of the incubator?

    We are in the same boat as you! Fingers crossed for all of our babies.
  14. willowbirdks

    Taking ducklings out of the incubator?

    We are struggling with humidity. We decided to put a couple of the pips (very quickly) on wet paper towels, and use that opportunity to pull the hatched duckies out. One concern we had was that the first poops from the hatchlings seem to have made all of the water in the incubator kind of...
  15. willowbirdks

    Taking ducklings out of the incubator?

    So we are in the middle of day 28 with duck hatching in the incubator, and we had two babies hatch last night! There are still 16 more eggs in lockdown mode, all of which have externally pipped (except for maybe one). The two that successfully hatched are completely dry, and storming around the...
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