2020 ducks

[Selene uwu]

Can't believe my duck eggs are scheduled to hatch on the last day of school. My ducklings should begin their lives at the end of my high school career, man what a time to be alive.

 

[Isaac 0]

How exciting!

What breed?

 

[Selene uwu]

How exciting!

What breed?

Peking Ducks! The family I am hatching them for gave me 24 eggs (all fertilized, very funky) and then I dropped the lid of my incubator and broke 2 eggs- so now I am down to 22!

 

[casportpony]

How did your hatch go?

 

[Selene uwu]

How did your hatch go?

Oh gosh I forgot about this thread- In the end the fertilization for all the eggs was 100%

Day two I Dropped the lid on two eggs. One was cracked in half and the other was damaged but I used some wax and tissue paper to fix it. Unfortunately by day 10 the baby stopped growing and eventually all the vascular development and movement stopped and the egg was buried.

As the days and weeks went on I watched as the all developed and grew and two days before their last day of incubation I went over to the families' home who were going to take the ducklings to spend a few days watching over their hatching. The day when they began peping the family dog ripped the incubators open and threw the eggs everywhere, it was a horrible sight to see with blood and egg shells everywhere. 4 were so damaged that one chick was hanging out and the others you could see moving around. One died a few hours later sleeping peacefully within its egg and the other one poked through its membrane before running out of energy and drowning in its own fluid after about 24/48 hour period.

The duckling that had half its body hanging out we pulled out of its egg and let it dry out. The remaining duckling poked through its clear membrane and fought hard for 48 hours, as the 48 hour mark came close the duckling became weaker so I used the edge of my nail to crack the shell more and encouraged hatching with chirping noises and scratching at the egg- soon enough they popped out! We named the "first born" Lucky and the second one Ducky.

The rest of the eggs hatched ~6 with a lot of internal shell bleeding that we could see on the shell as they were hatching. The last one to hatch we named them Salida. Due to the damage the dog had done some ducklings were born with some marks on them, Ducky for example had a wound at the top of its head and another had a puncture wound in its abdomen but all were happy and healthy... except for one...

Lucky only opened their eyes a few times in its short life but they always fought hard, We seperated them to the other side of our large brooder so it could have full acess to the heat lamp since the other ducklings kept pushing Lucky out. One morning they were no were to be seen until I saw faint movement from under the bedding and there Lucky was struggling to reach its brothers and sisters- I though they would die but by the end of that day they were back to sleeping faintly being fed by an eyedropper and the end of a ziptie. On day 4 we made a cradle for Lucky using a heat pad and a sock, unfortuantely there was a heating malfunction leaving Lucky cold for a while too long and that night Lucky breathed some of its last breaths in my hands.

A day later one duckling had a similar heating malfunction and a say after that one seized to death from unknown causes either from infection or previous trauma. I had only even witnessed the death of that duckling because the youngest duckling (Salida) had rolled out of the pile and was laying limp in the bedding- Lucky Salida made it.

Out of 24 eggs we lost 2 from a mechanical malfunction, 2 to dog trauma, and 3 from human error. We burried the ducklings in the soil beneath the duck yard close to their brothers and sisters. We had 17 happy healthy ducklings in the end!

This story has had a wonderful "ending" of sorts. Two ducklings were adopted out to a family who wanted ducks as pets (and who had been researching their care for a few years now) and live a SPOILED life! The other 9 were re-homed out to two farms with other ducks, one home even had 8 acres of land with water fixtures for them to live happy duck lives. The last 6 we kept were ones that had bonded best with the family (Including Ducky who is now and always has been such a boss and Salida). A concern we had earlier was about two ducklings who always seemed to have very pale complexions: Light feathers, sickly orange legs, and white/pink looking bills. They have not had any health issues and from research they seem to not be pure bred Pekins and just have a different complextion.

They are currently a little over 4 weeks old and are supper happy to be out in their pond eating all the overgrown vegetation that the family has had so much trouble keeping under control. @Apollos-Quackers is the duck's mom and you can see her updates over there!