6 Miniature Appleyard eggs - advice welcome

[Isaac 0]

 

[Isaac 0]

How many gallons of sweat did you produce when you were drilling the hole?

 

[Isaac 0]

For bantam breeds, I wait around 14-20 hours-ish after the first pip.

 

[Holonomic]

Unfortunately we do not which makes looseing that second one even harder.
We do have another 12 in the oven but those are not due for another 2 weeks!

Any tips on what to do to help this little guy until he has some friends?

 

[Holonomic]

Thank you, I shall have a word with our daughter and see if she would be willing to give up one of her fluffy toys

S/He is doing so well, walking around seems to be eating and drinking fine. I just used my fingers to show it what to do and it copied me.
S/he does seem to chirp a lot if we walk past so I do think it needs company. It is a real shame we only got one from this batch.
I did think about asking the local farm to borrow one of their ducks... but that wouldn't work as they will be far too big! Concerned about integration with the other after 2 weeks old let a lone a fully grown duck

@Tillyk I wish you luck, we realised early on that we were only going to have a few ducks from the first batch of 6 so we got more ready and a new/better incubator. 2 weeks to go for those

@Dees ducks hello fellow UK citizen love your profile picture, is it much maintenance to keep it looking like that?

 

[Isaac 0]

Age difference won't matter, It's just the work that is sometimes involved with integrating young birds to older birds.You'll just have to wait and see, ratio partly depends on each drakes personality and your setup, a good guideline to go by though, is around one drake per five hens. Cute kid!

 

[Holonomic]

Ok so I think we have come to a decision (sort of) on this. We will not be getting another 6 hatching eggs until the ones we currently have are hatched.
If we get lucky and get a 3:1 ratio we may just leave it for this year and use our own eggs to hopefully increase the size of the flock to 6:1.

That depends on us being able to sex the chicks early, if we are unable to do so or we have more drakes than hens we shall be buying another 6 hatching eggs this year to ensure we have the right ratio for when breeding season starts. This should avoid us needing the remove the drake from the 'flock'.

 

[Holonomic]

Absolutely, unfortunately there are no breeders local to us that breed these ducks (we want to keep to the one breed for now).
I think that would have been the ideal solution to the problem however.

 

[Isaac 0]

The first egg looks like a goner to me, the rest of the eggs it's hard to see, which isn't a bad sign! Do you see any veins in the other eggs? As far as turning goes, I would go every two hours, but I would wait to see Pyxis and WVduckchick opinion though, they have much more experience than me.

 

[WVduckchick]

I agree, the first one is a “quitter” (sounds a little less morbid, and hopefully doesn’t make you feel as bad). It happens, so don’t feel like it’s your fault.
The other two look good, but I also agree with sniffing the eggs every so often. Your nose will tell you if something bad is going on.

Also, just to double-check... day 1 doesn’t start until 24 hours after they start incubating. Many make the mistake by starting to count at 1, as soon as they are set, so just in case, I thought I’d mention it.

I also have a Brinsea mini ex, gotta love that little incubator! I use it a lot for late hatchers, or as an ICU unit, if any hatch that need a little extra care, or alone time, etc.

Turning 3-5 times a day is fine, but every couple hours is fine too. When I’m not on Corid-home-confinement, I only turn 3 times a day - before work, after work, and before bed. But now that I’ve been home, I’ve been turning maybe 4-5 times a day.

Good luck with your little endeavor!