29 day duck eggs, live, no pips or signs of hatching.

[ChickenCanoe]

My incubator thermometer

The incubator thermometer cannot be relied upon. They are notoriously inaccurate.
I can almost guarantee, if you use a guaranteed accurate or calibrated independent thermometer

 

[GottaHatchEmAll]

The incubator thermometer cannot be relied upon. They are notoriously inaccurate.
I can almost guarantee, if you use a guaranteed accurate or calibrated independent thermometer

The thermometer lets you adjust the temperature and shows what temperature it's set on.

 

[SnackMeat]

If they are still alive at the temp you had running before after 29 days I would stick with that temp. It would be good to get a second thermometer. It's not impossible that the incubator heater could start acting weird halfway through but if they are still alive I would go with what has worked this far.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

The thermometer lets you adjust the temperature and shows what temperature it's set on.

I understand that but unless you have a reliable base temperature, you don't know what you are adjusting to accomplish. Until verified, you are working with unknown nebulous values.

 

[SnackMeat]

Yeah, every single incubator I have worked with has been off temp. I mean it's only been 3 but still. I have to set two of them between 103-104* to hit roughly where I need them to be. If I set to 99.5* they die (and yes, I did this too when my backup thermometer was wrong. Killed several expensive eggs :/)

 

[GottaHatchEmAll]

Yeah, every single incubator I have worked with has been off temp. I mean it's only been 3 but still. I have to set two of them between 103-104* to hit roughly where I need them to be. If I set to 99.5* they die (and yes, I did this too when my backup thermometer was wrong. Killed several expensive eggs :/)

Oh no what kind of eggs were they???

I upped the temp back up to 102 degrees, put the egg racks back in, and candled the eggs earlier. They are still alive. No blood ring, and blood vessels were still visible. The eggs weren't turned for about 2 days, but they are okay. But the embryos do not seem fully developed so maybe they are muscovy eggs and not pekin eggs, since these eggs looked significantly different from pekin eggs when I compared the two. At first I thought they were pekin eggs because they looked a lot like pekin eggs.

 

[SnackMeat]

6 were breeder (rather than pet) quality silkies $150/dozen, and then there were another two (I think that was around the same time) that were Indio Gigante eggs ($15 each.) however, I think there was possibly a different issue with the 2 Indio eggs that were fertile but didn't hatch. I'd have to check my notes.

If they've made it 29 days, it's probably not 102*+

And not turning it shouldn't be too bad. Though I will say you want to look at the Muscovy incubation thread on this forum. Make sure the vents are completely open for oxygen. Consider misting and resting the eggs each day. And pay special attention to the air sacs. You want to do everything (evaporation via misting, turning often enough-- not turning for 2 days is probably fine) to get those air sacs large enough because the goo will drown the ducks. And expect the hatching process to be long. If I recall it can be 3-5 days versus 1-3 for chickens.

 

[GottaHatchEmAll]

6 were breeder (rather than pet) quality silkies $150/dozen, and then there were another two (I think that was around the same time) that were Indio Gigante eggs ($15 each.) however, I think there was possibly a different issue with the 2 Indio eggs that were fertile but didn't hatch. I'd have to check my notes.

If they've made it 29 days, it's probably not 102*+

And not turning it shouldn't be too bad. Though I will say you want to look at the Muscovy incubation thread on this forum. Make sure the vents are completely open for oxygen. Consider misting and resting the eggs each day. And pay special attention to the air sacs. You want to do everything (evaporation via misting, turning often enough-- not turning for 2 days is probably fine) to get those air sacs large enough because the goo will drown the ducks. And expect the hatching process to be long. If I recall it can be 3-5 days versus 1-3 for chickens.

I have also killed eggs before. Before this incubator, I had another incubator. It had a very poor instruction manual and had temperature setting buttons, but it would not let you set the temperature. If you set the temperature, it would not apply the new temperature. It lost humidity extremely fast, and the temperature rarely went above 95 degrees. I had several failed hatches with that incubator. One of my hatches, I had two chicks that hatched but both died within a day of hatching, but then again, they were moved to a separate incubator in the last week of incubation. Most of the eggs died before hatching. Few batches that I incubated got pips but the chicks died shortly after pipping. These eggs weren't outright expensive, but they were still from very rare breeds endemic to Korea.

 

[GottaHatchEmAll]

The incubator is extremely humid. I have been pouring in 3-4 cups of warm water daily in the water tray, and the water is converted to mist, making the incubator humid. I also misted the eggs a bunch a few days before in order to soften the shells. I just misted them about 45 minutes ago.