Hello all, I’m Andy and a complete newbe to forums and also egg hatching. I live in sunny uk, north west 
. We had 2 Aylesbury ducks from chicks about 2 weeks old. Picked a random 2 from 20+ chicks and they turned out to be male and female. Perfect luck. They where skittish at the start but soon a good bond developed between themselves and us. They would literally never be apart from one another. These ducks where pets with the added bonus of eggs to eat, I’m a self confessed eggoholic! I’m a builder so I made a duck pen at the bottom of the garden next to my wood store so they could eat all sorts of insects in there. I spent many hours making the pen for them and sunk a massive storage box into the floor for them. I have enclosed pics of it all. Those ducks got the platinum care plan, I would wash the flags down weekly, jet wash every other week. Thier coop was religiously changed out weekly and jet washed fortnightly also. Their diet was better than mine, top quality pellets, lots of greens, I’d buy like mealworms and grubs for them plus they where allowed to forage in the garden, no snails in sight and 2 foot high of every plant was stripped haha! I really did look after them as best I could. So all going well the drake started to mate in the pond with the hen. I thought they must be getting ready to lay eggs soon. My efforts repaid I thought…… until I went out last Monday evening and both had been killed by a suspected fox. Gutted. I’d have been ok with this if the fox had taken the birds to eat or feed its Cubs with them but it chewed the neck of one and just killed the other! Apparently foxes will wipe out an entire henhouse of 50 birds and take 1??….. killing for sport according to my friend. Anyhow very deflated and upset I took the brave step to hatch my own from eggs. I do no have the eggs yet they are due end of the week, so I could get to grips with the all important humidity and temps. I have 12 Cayuga eggs to hatch. I have an incubator shown in pics. It’s not the best but I have a separate thermometer and hygrometer in there to be sure. Im testing it and my skill to keep temps and humidity right before the eggs arrive. Have been doing this for a week now playing around with humidity mainly. I’m confident with temp and humidity, I can keep 50-60 for the start of this and for last few days have mastered (if I may say so) 80%. This bit I understand and get. Also to open the box up and ‘cool’ the eggs for a few minutes with room temp stable and warm and then mist before putting lid back on to replicate the mother going to the pond to feed, drink etc everyday. So my questions to the experienced people of the world are these:-
1 - iv read that the ‘rocking’ type of incubator I have isn’t really suited to Ducks, with a lot of information about taking this rack out and hand turning, 7 times a day for the 1st week, reducing to 3 times a day thereafter
what are your thoughts on this?
2 - the eggs are better on their sides rather than point down
3 - how would you guys do this with what I have?
So they are my questions. I’m not expecting a 12 egg hatch I know that but I want to give them the best chance to live. I’m keeping 3 (up to now haha!!) and the others will be going to my friend who keeps and breeds ducks chickens and quails and has a massive area for all these birds to roam freely and cares for them as they should be.
Any advise or help would be very much appreciated, and I thank you all in advance for reading and helping, I know iv come on here asking before helping etc but what I will give back is an updated post on how im getting on and hopefully some ducklings at the end which would be fab!!
thanks again andy
. We had 2 Aylesbury ducks from chicks about 2 weeks old. Picked a random 2 from 20+ chicks and they turned out to be male and female. Perfect luck. They where skittish at the start but soon a good bond developed between themselves and us. They would literally never be apart from one another. These ducks where pets with the added bonus of eggs to eat, I’m a self confessed eggoholic! I’m a builder so I made a duck pen at the bottom of the garden next to my wood store so they could eat all sorts of insects in there. I spent many hours making the pen for them and sunk a massive storage box into the floor for them. I have enclosed pics of it all. Those ducks got the platinum care plan, I would wash the flags down weekly, jet wash every other week. Thier coop was religiously changed out weekly and jet washed fortnightly also. Their diet was better than mine, top quality pellets, lots of greens, I’d buy like mealworms and grubs for them plus they where allowed to forage in the garden, no snails in sight and 2 foot high of every plant was stripped haha! I really did look after them as best I could. So all going well the drake started to mate in the pond with the hen. I thought they must be getting ready to lay eggs soon. My efforts repaid I thought…… until I went out last Monday evening and both had been killed by a suspected fox. Gutted. I’d have been ok with this if the fox had taken the birds to eat or feed its Cubs with them but it chewed the neck of one and just killed the other! Apparently foxes will wipe out an entire henhouse of 50 birds and take 1??….. killing for sport according to my friend. Anyhow very deflated and upset I took the brave step to hatch my own from eggs. I do no have the eggs yet they are due end of the week, so I could get to grips with the all important humidity and temps. I have 12 Cayuga eggs to hatch. I have an incubator shown in pics. It’s not the best but I have a separate thermometer and hygrometer in there to be sure. Im testing it and my skill to keep temps and humidity right before the eggs arrive. Have been doing this for a week now playing around with humidity mainly. I’m confident with temp and humidity, I can keep 50-60 for the start of this and for last few days have mastered (if I may say so) 80%. This bit I understand and get. Also to open the box up and ‘cool’ the eggs for a few minutes with room temp stable and warm and then mist before putting lid back on to replicate the mother going to the pond to feed, drink etc everyday. So my questions to the experienced people of the world are these:-1 - iv read that the ‘rocking’ type of incubator I have isn’t really suited to Ducks, with a lot of information about taking this rack out and hand turning, 7 times a day for the 1st week, reducing to 3 times a day thereafter
what are your thoughts on this?
2 - the eggs are better on their sides rather than point down
3 - how would you guys do this with what I have?
So they are my questions. I’m not expecting a 12 egg hatch I know that but I want to give them the best chance to live. I’m keeping 3 (up to now haha!!) and the others will be going to my friend who keeps and breeds ducks chickens and quails and has a massive area for all these birds to roam freely and cares for them as they should be.
Any advise or help would be very much appreciated, and I thank you all in advance for reading and helping, I know iv come on here asking before helping etc but what I will give back is an updated post on how im getting on and hopefully some ducklings at the end which would be fab!!
thanks again andy
