Difficulty of Muscovy Incubating?

[Hatching Teacher]

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.

Hello!
You seem to be JUST the person I’m looking for for my situation....I’m a teacher...Grade 1/2 and I’m incubating Muscovies in my classroom. We’re just finishing up Day 30 (so 5 days left) and I have 26 well developed eggs. BUT, my question is this...today when I candled them I saw 5 eggs that have ‘drawn down’ (at least that’s what I think it’s called after I panicked at the size of those 5 air cells I did some research). I can see the beaks pushing on the internal membrane but they haven’t internally pipped yet. Sooo, I’m wondering if I should put the incubator into lockdown tomorrow (at Day 31...one day early and shut off the turner and raise the humidity) or leave it until day 32 like the ‘rules’ say. HELP! Lol Thank you!!

 

[casportpony]

@learycow, what would you do?

 

[learycow]

I would put into "lockdown". Once they are beginning the pipping stage, its important to have humidity where it needs to be or you risk early shrink wrapping