Difficulty of Muscovy Incubating?

[casportpony]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/incubating-and-hatching-muscovy-eggs.63532/

@learycow is experienced with hatching Muscovies as is @casportpony

@learycow probably has way more experience that I do, so I would follow their advice for sure.

Edited to add:
Yinepu's article is a good one, and I have found most of what she says in it to be true.

 

[casportpony]

I've done 5 clutches of 6 each so far. Only 1 survived each hatch. The rest would pip and quit and it's highly frustrating. I've done quail and chickens with absolutely no problems (90- 100% hatch rate), I'm not sure what's going wrong with the muscovies.

Not sure if this helps, maybe only as a guide as to what I did to have such an abysmal hatch rate: 99.5 forced air. Dry incubation (it's moderately humid where I am and adding water causes the weird amber goo to show up) Auto turner until day 27 (for some reason all of mine start internally pipping around day 29-31. Learned from the first clutch of mostly malpositions to take them out of the autoturner a little earlier just in case.

I still have 2 more clutches--one was partially artificially incubated by me to day 25 but after the crappy hatch rate, I put them under a broody to finish (I figured she can't do worse than me at this point). Another broody is sitting on a clutch she's incubating all by herself. If the partially incubated clutch mostly come out okay, then I think something about lockdown/the incubator hatching process is amiss. If they still pip and die, it's most likely the incubation process.

What incubator are you using?

 

[Elinjay]

Now I have incubated about everything under the sun but never Muscovies. In a couple weeks I am ordering a dozen and going to give it a shot. Has anyone here had success in hatching them in an incubator? What would the dos and donts be?

I've had no luck incubating muscovies either. I've done it twice, first time about 1 fourth made it to the end but none of them hatched, and second time is now, half made it to the end, and so far 3 have hatched but 1 is in a bad state. I've hatched chickens just before, it was the first time, and got about 60% succes rate so I think muscovies are harder to hatch after all..

 

[casportpony]

I've had no luck incubating muscovies either. I've done it twice, first time about 1 fourth made it to the end but none of them hatched, and second time is now, half made it to the end, and so far 3 have hatched but 1 is in a bad state. I've hatched chickens just before, it was the first time, and got about 60% succes rate so I think muscovies are harder to hatch after all..

have you read Yinepu's article?

 

[casportpony]

Yup I knew about 35 days and also heard not to give up until the 37th day.

33 to 37 days is what I go by.

 

[Elinjay]

have you read Yinepu's article?

I can't find it, can you send me the link?

 

[Miss Lydia]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/incubating-and-hatching-muscovy-eggs.63532/

 

[learycow]

Muscovy, in my experience, are the toughest to incubate.

I incubate on their side, hand turn, cool and mist once a day starting day 7. And dry incubate, so only 30-35% humidity until "lockdown"

 

[Miss Lydia]

Always good to get info for someone who has experience with hatching the particular ducks we're interested in.

 

[MargaretAnneHK]

Thanks all!!! Muscovys will be my next challenge then.