So to start off backroung info: We have three ducks that we have raised since day olds. One female and two males. Female is some sort of blue crested something or another and my two boys are a white crested, and a magpie. So the boys just became "mature" about a month and a half ago, and we decided to see if we could get some baby ducks. Belkin (our girl) lays daily, and it took a couple weeks once we saw the ducks performing adult deeds so to say, before we got any fertile eggs.
I started keeping them all in the coop instead of putting them in the fridge. The first 12 eggs did not develop any veining, so now we have 15 or 16 fertile developing eggs. The problem/question that I have is because of the heat (phx, AZ) the eggs started developing before she started sitting on them, but because they are all laid at different times(obviously) they are developing at different paces. I have like 6 or 7 that there is a pretty big baby duck in, and others that are just starting to vein and get a heart beat. Is this normal? Also, mom Belkin still is not sitting on them during the day, only at night when we lock them up for the evening in the coop. Is this normal (because it's already hot?)? And because she's not in there throughout the day, we have been turning them(odd number of times throughout day, have them marked) and she seems to mess with them at night, but she doesn't turn all of them, she just seems to mess them up, if that makes sense. Lol.
So, this morning the nest was just a mess. She had actually just flubbed up most of it and one of the more developed eggs had cracked(by the air pocket end) so I looked up how to fix that. That problem is solved. For my last question-Because they are all developing at different rates(we candle them daily) when can we expect them to hatch? Unfortunately I didn't start writing the dates on them until around the 4th of july, but I already had some eggs in there before then, they just don't have a date. But it seems as though it's been over 28 days for a few of them. They are all still developing, and are all alive, I just don't know what to expect as far as the hatching goes. Any suggestions after all of this rambling would be very appreciated. I can only google things so much, sometimes it's nice to talk to real people, lol. Thanks in advance!
I started keeping them all in the coop instead of putting them in the fridge. The first 12 eggs did not develop any veining, so now we have 15 or 16 fertile developing eggs. The problem/question that I have is because of the heat (phx, AZ) the eggs started developing before she started sitting on them, but because they are all laid at different times(obviously) they are developing at different paces. I have like 6 or 7 that there is a pretty big baby duck in, and others that are just starting to vein and get a heart beat. Is this normal? Also, mom Belkin still is not sitting on them during the day, only at night when we lock them up for the evening in the coop. Is this normal (because it's already hot?)? And because she's not in there throughout the day, we have been turning them(odd number of times throughout day, have them marked) and she seems to mess with them at night, but she doesn't turn all of them, she just seems to mess them up, if that makes sense. Lol.
So, this morning the nest was just a mess. She had actually just flubbed up most of it and one of the more developed eggs had cracked(by the air pocket end) so I looked up how to fix that. That problem is solved. For my last question-Because they are all developing at different rates(we candle them daily) when can we expect them to hatch? Unfortunately I didn't start writing the dates on them until around the 4th of july, but I already had some eggs in there before then, they just don't have a date. But it seems as though it's been over 28 days for a few of them. They are all still developing, and are all alive, I just don't know what to expect as far as the hatching goes. Any suggestions after all of this rambling would be very appreciated. I can only google things so much, sometimes it's nice to talk to real people, lol. Thanks in advance!
