Double Yolk Incubation Research Project

[MarlyMonster]

Hi Marly, how are the babies doing? Any new pics?

Crooked unfortunately passed away two days ago

Still kinda processing it. Will share pictures of Penny soon

 

[MarlyMonster]

Great thread and very interesting ! For a few years my kids and I would incubate every double yolk egg we could find but never had any luck . Most would never develop and those that did never developed vary far . Best of luck with your chick

They’re so tricky, I only got as far as I did because I had multiple. Only 3 doubles made it to lockdown out of the 12! (10 doubles, 2 developed singles, though 4 of the doubles quit early)

 

[Speedychicken27]

I was just wondering if the chicks live are you going to assist hatching or are you going to let it go naturally?

 

[Rammy]

Sorry about your little ducky. You took great care of them and went above and beyond trying to help. You were and are a good duck momma.

 

[MarlyMonster]

I was just wondering if the chicks live are you going to assist hatching or are you going to let it go naturally?

Well the one single baby I had needed help and he just passed away due to severe malformations so I’m not sure if I’d assist again. Obviously there was a reason why he couldn’t make it out by himself

 

[SueT]

Oh no, sorry to hear, thanks for sharing this saga...

 

[Erka97]

I have a thread over in the Emu, Ostrich, Rhea part of this site, it's probably still on the first page if you look there.
As for getting eggs from the larger species, your best bets are to either get them on Ebay or join a group on facebook for them and ask around [Emus as Pets is where I got my twins.] They're expensive and you can only expect about a 50% hatch rate because humans aren't very good at incubating them generally [no one agrees about most parameters for incubation.]
I've hatched emus twice. Three shipped ebay eggs the first time; two developed despite my faulty incubator, of which one made it out alive. Unfortunately he had a leg deformity and eventually got sick and died [NEVER let them on slippery flooring as they have delicate legs as babies; and even then, like mine, there's a chance issues there might develop]. So the next year I got two more ebay eggs; One hatched and is currently taller than I am, the other was infertile or quit very early as there was no sign of blood or anything when I cracked it.
Today is day 4 for egg number one of the double experiment, and I've just ordered the other double egg and a normal sibling [or two] from the breeder.
I've looked into egg window experiments before. I've seen someone try it with emus and only seemed to kill their eggs -I'd try it too if I had a laying pair, but I'm not doing anything to intentionally damage my 50$ or so eggs!
I've also thought about doing it with chicken eggs, and I still might, but again I always feel bad and have difficulty doing anything that would intentionally harm my eggs. I did have one egg that I dropped the incubator lid on; making an accidental window in the egg. I sealed it up and the egg lived until hatch time, when it chose to try to zip while I was asleep, failed, and suffocated itself against the inside of the egg. I was so sad -I really thought that one was going to make it.

 

[Erka97]

Also, assisted hatching has nothing to do with malformations. I'm sorry your first experience was a bad one, but I have saved the lives of quite a few ducks and chickens in this way -I'm what's known as a "hands on hatcher" here on this site. I'll share some of my best chick helping stories that I can remember here.

A few years ago, I had a muscovy duck hen sitting a nest. She decided to locate it inside my chicken coop, which seemed to go fine for almost the entire incubation. Hatch day was getting close [although admittedly I was using the normal duck hatch day, as I was not very familiar with her breed and had also sneaked some other random duck eggs into her nest when I could], and I went out to check on them... There was a little yellow duckling, wet and cold and bleeding, laying outside the nest. Apparently, the chickens had tried to eat an egg and got a surprise when they found a chick in there -at least they didn't eat her too and she was still alive! I rushed her into the house, where I ended up having to remove the remains of her [punctured and leaking] yolk sac and hold what I assume was part of her intestine inside her belly until it closed up. I put her in my incubator, fully expecting her to die from all the trauma or from infection. She didn't die, but instead got stronger and was soon able to walk and eat. She was a week old before her siblings hatched, and she was the lone survivor of the nest because I [stupidly] let mom keep the babies to raise and she did not protect them well enough from predators. The duckling followed me everywhere and was eventually named "The Ductor" by myself and my family as both a reference to Doctor Who and the fact that I had, for her first week of life, simply referred to her as "The Duck." She grew up into a lovely white duck hen, so I assume she was out of an "adopted" egg that I snuck into the nest. She ended up surviving a snapping turtle attack [I had to play tug of war over a duck, with a snapping turtle, after having jumped fully clothed into my pond to rescue her. My shoe and a good chunk of her side were lost in the battle, but she lived and healed well.] and being tripped over [she didn't understand that following means you have to be behind whatever you're following], but unfortunately she decided to resist being brought inside at night and join my flock of other ducks once she got older and died when they were attacked by predators. She was the best duck I've had so far, and is missed by all.

A few years later, I was incubating a batch of eggs from my flock of chickens. All was going well so far, and I had quite a few chicks hatched and already hanging out in the brooder. The remaining eggs didn't show signs of cracking, so I went about checking them and cracking any that didn't show movement. I had some that had died instead of hatching, which is unfortunately normal -hatching is difficult!
But then I got to this one egg. It looked weird on candling; definitely movement, but no beak. I decided to make a hole in the top to get a better look. Black feathers and veins everywhere, but there was no head or beak anywhere to be seen and the vessels looked abnormal, dark red rather than the bright color they were supposed to be. This chick must be suffocating in the shell, so I sprang into action chipping away the shell to look for the head. It took many minutes of careful work and several stops to stop bleeds and warm the egg up, but eventually I found her face [in the middle of the egg up against her belly] and freed her beak. I was rewarded with a weak little squeak as she started breathing, and laid her back in the incubator still half inside her egg on a clean sponge [it was all I could find] so she wouldn't fall down through the holes in my incubator shelf while she finished absorbing her yolk and blood vessels. She was very weak, and several times she was mistaken for dead by my family. But baby "Sponge" was not dead and gained her strength over the next few days. She was also born with considerable weakness in one of her legs, so when she started walking she'd often just flip herself over and be unable to move. I fed her bits of chick feed, egg yolks, and water with a spoon, and over her first week of life she gained enough strength to be put in with her siblings. They were much bigger than her by this point, but she was doing well and more friendly than they were because of all the special attention she had needed. She grew up for the most part with them, surviving a bout of unknown illness that killed a few of them despite my efforts to save them, and going with them to the outside brooder when they got too big for the inside one... And then, somehow, she and some others escaped. I was too late to save one of them, but managed to find her huddled and half froze behind some boards in my barn. I brought her in but was not hopeful; she was so froze that she could barely even stand up. Poor baby. She lived and improved, though, and I kept her in my cockatiel's cage for the rest of the winter before introducing her to my other chickens [all that remained from another predator attack at that point were two of our roosters], where she slowly learned how to be a chicken again. She grew into a lovely, shiny black hen and gave me several equally beautiful chicks in her life before she, too, was unfortunately lost to predators [those animals are impossibly good at finding any possible weakness in a chicken coop!] She was healthy and normal as an adult otherwise, and her chicks were healthy and needed no additional hatching help as well. I've had eggs like hers since, but unfortunately there is only a short window of time to act and the other ones that I have caught in time weren't so much malpositioned as they had facial deformities that prevented them from hatching and perished soon after the assist from their issues [most often skull deformities that exposed the brain or beak deformities that made breathing very difficult, assist or not they never would have lived -but you never know unless you try.]
As for doubles, if you're going to do them again, I'd suggest putting water in to increase humidity but otherwise ignoring the lockdown for the most part. Don't open too often or leave the incubator sit open, but don't just leave them on their own either. Watch those eggs closely and help them if they seem distressed since [like my Sponge hen above] twin eggs have difficulty positioning themselves properly and so one or both will be unable to even internally pip, let alone break the shell. For that reason, I'd probably window the tops of the surviving eggs within a few days of hatch [maybe keep some normal eggs in there of the same type and set the same day to indicate when the eggs should be hatching] so that I could observe for beaks and see the condition of blood vessels; if they go dark, then it's time to do egg surgery to find the beaks. There's risk of death from bleeding, infection, or drying, but as you've seen the alternative doesn't really end up any better.
Also, at the end of incubation I have read that it is difficult for double chicks to get enough oxygen through the shell for both. Windowing may help some with that, as well as finding a way to increase oxygen levels in there [I've been thinking of using an oxygen concentrator -expensive though-, oxygen tanks -also expensive for the amount of time they'd be needed, especially for emus-, or even chemical reactions such as peroxide with liver or potato to produce oxygen and water -won't be good for emus because of their low humidity needs, but would probably be great for ducks and chickens]... Even just surrounding them with plants and shining a light on the incubator might help; especially in more conventional eggs since the plants would release both oxygen and water as they did their photosynthesis thing.

 

[MarlyMonster]

I have a thread over in the Emu, Ostrich, Rhea part of this site, it's probably still on the first page if you look there.
As for getting eggs from the larger species, your best bets are to either get them on Ebay or join a group on facebook for them and ask around [Emus as Pets is where I got my twins.] They're expensive and you can only expect about a 50% hatch rate because humans aren't very good at incubating them generally [no one agrees about most parameters for incubation.]
I've hatched emus twice. Three shipped ebay eggs the first time; two developed despite my faulty incubator, of which one made it out alive. Unfortunately he had a leg deformity and eventually got sick and died [NEVER let them on slippery flooring as they have delicate legs as babies; and even then, like mine, there's a chance issues there might develop]. So the next year I got two more ebay eggs; One hatched and is currently taller than I am, the other was infertile or quit very early as there was no sign of blood or anything when I cracked it.
Today is day 4 for egg number one of the double experiment, and I've just ordered the other double egg and a normal sibling [or two] from the breeder.
I've looked into egg window experiments before. I've seen someone try it with emus and only seemed to kill their eggs -I'd try it too if I had a laying pair, but I'm not doing anything to intentionally damage my 50$ or so eggs!
I've also thought about doing it with chicken eggs, and I still might, but again I always feel bad and have difficulty doing anything that would intentionally harm my eggs. I did have one egg that I dropped the incubator lid on; making an accidental window in the egg. I sealed it up and the egg lived until hatch time, when it chose to try to zip while I was asleep, failed, and suffocated itself against the inside of the egg. I was so sad -I really thought that one was going to make it.

Also, assisted hatching has nothing to do with malformations. I'm sorry your first experience was a bad one, but I have saved the lives of quite a few ducks and chickens in this way -I'm what's known as a "hands on hatcher" here on this site. I'll share some of my best chick helping stories that I can remember here.

A few years ago, I had a muscovy duck hen sitting a nest. She decided to locate it inside my chicken coop, which seemed to go fine for almost the entire incubation. Hatch day was getting close [although admittedly I was using the normal duck hatch day, as I was not very familiar with her breed and had also sneaked some other random duck eggs into her nest when I could], and I went out to check on them... There was a little yellow duckling, wet and cold and bleeding, laying outside the nest. Apparently, the chickens had tried to eat an egg and got a surprise when they found a chick in there -at least they didn't eat her too and she was still alive! I rushed her into the house, where I ended up having to remove the remains of her [punctured and leaking] yolk sac and hold what I assume was part of her intestine inside her belly until it closed up. I put her in my incubator, fully expecting her to die from all the trauma or from infection. She didn't die, but instead got stronger and was soon able to walk and eat. She was a week old before her siblings hatched, and she was the lone survivor of the nest because I [stupidly] let mom keep the babies to raise and she did not protect them well enough from predators. The duckling followed me everywhere and was eventually named "The Ductor" by myself and my family as both a reference to Doctor Who and the fact that I had, for her first week of life, simply referred to her as "The Duck." She grew up into a lovely white duck hen, so I assume she was out of an "adopted" egg that I snuck into the nest. She ended up surviving a snapping turtle attack [I had to play tug of war over a duck, with a snapping turtle, after having jumped fully clothed into my pond to rescue her. My shoe and a good chunk of her side were lost in the battle, but she lived and healed well.] and being tripped over [she didn't understand that following means you have to be behind whatever you're following], but unfortunately she decided to resist being brought inside at night and join my flock of other ducks once she got older and died when they were attacked by predators. She was the best duck I've had so far, and is missed by all.

A few years later, I was incubating a batch of eggs from my flock of chickens. All was going well so far, and I had quite a few chicks hatched and already hanging out in the brooder. The remaining eggs didn't show signs of cracking, so I went about checking them and cracking any that didn't show movement. I had some that had died instead of hatching, which is unfortunately normal -hatching is difficult!
But then I got to this one egg. It looked weird on candling; definitely movement, but no beak. I decided to make a hole in the top to get a better look. Black feathers and veins everywhere, but there was no head or beak anywhere to be seen and the vessels looked abnormal, dark red rather than the bright color they were supposed to be. This chick must be suffocating in the shell, so I sprang into action chipping away the shell to look for the head. It took many minutes of careful work and several stops to stop bleeds and warm the egg up, but eventually I found her face [in the middle of the egg up against her belly] and freed her beak. I was rewarded with a weak little squeak as she started breathing, and laid her back in the incubator still half inside her egg on a clean sponge [it was all I could find] so she wouldn't fall down through the holes in my incubator shelf while she finished absorbing her yolk and blood vessels. She was very weak, and several times she was mistaken for dead by my family. But baby "Sponge" was not dead and gained her strength over the next few days. She was also born with considerable weakness in one of her legs, so when she started walking she'd often just flip herself over and be unable to move. I fed her bits of chick feed, egg yolks, and water with a spoon, and over her first week of life she gained enough strength to be put in with her siblings. They were much bigger than her by this point, but she was doing well and more friendly than they were because of all the special attention she had needed. She grew up for the most part with them, surviving a bout of unknown illness that killed a few of them despite my efforts to save them, and going with them to the outside brooder when they got too big for the inside one... And then, somehow, she and some others escaped. I was too late to save one of them, but managed to find her huddled and half froze behind some boards in my barn. I brought her in but was not hopeful; she was so froze that she could barely even stand up. Poor baby. She lived and improved, though, and I kept her in my cockatiel's cage for the rest of the winter before introducing her to my other chickens [all that remained from another predator attack at that point were two of our roosters], where she slowly learned how to be a chicken again. She grew into a lovely, shiny black hen and gave me several equally beautiful chicks in her life before she, too, was unfortunately lost to predators [those animals are impossibly good at finding any possible weakness in a chicken coop!] She was healthy and normal as an adult otherwise, and her chicks were healthy and needed no additional hatching help as well. I've had eggs like hers since, but unfortunately there is only a short window of time to act and the other ones that I have caught in time weren't so much malpositioned as they had facial deformities that prevented them from hatching and perished soon after the assist from their issues [most often skull deformities that exposed the brain or beak deformities that made breathing very difficult, assist or not they never would have lived -but you never know unless you try.]
As for doubles, if you're going to do them again, I'd suggest putting water in to increase humidity but otherwise ignoring the lockdown for the most part. Don't open too often or leave the incubator sit open, but don't just leave them on their own either. Watch those eggs closely and help them if they seem distressed since [like my Sponge hen above] twin eggs have difficulty positioning themselves properly and so one or both will be unable to even internally pip, let alone break the shell. For that reason, I'd probably window the tops of the surviving eggs within a few days of hatch [maybe keep some normal eggs in there of the same type and set the same day to indicate when the eggs should be hatching] so that I could observe for beaks and see the condition of blood vessels; if they go dark, then it's time to do egg surgery to find the beaks. There's risk of death from bleeding, infection, or drying, but as you've seen the alternative doesn't really end up any better.
Also, at the end of incubation I have read that it is difficult for double chicks to get enough oxygen through the shell for both. Windowing may help some with that, as well as finding a way to increase oxygen levels in there [I've been thinking of using an oxygen concentrator -expensive though-, oxygen tanks -also expensive for the amount of time they'd be needed, especially for emus-, or even chemical reactions such as peroxide with liver or potato to produce oxygen and water -won't be good for emus because of their low humidity needs, but would probably be great for ducks and chickens]... Even just surrounding them with plants and shining a light on the incubator might help; especially in more conventional eggs since the plants would release both oxygen and water as they did their photosynthesis thing.

Wow hatching emu eggs sounds super complicated. I’ve gotten the same when researching Muscovy eggs, apparently they’re super tough to hatch. Probably didn’t help them being doubles on top of it all.

Sorry your window baby didn’t make it, that’s awful

I don’t think the assistant part is what caused the deformations, but rather is what caused him to not be able to get out himself. He must have a genetic defect and because of it couldn’t zip. I’m glad I got him out, because there was no way I was gonna let him die, but looking back I do believe him not being able to hatch was for a very good reason. I’m sure there’s lots that do fine when helped though! Just was interesting with this little guy. Just so sad he passed away

 

[Erka97]

I'd love to get chickens; they're the easiest to hatch as far as I know. Maybe some more conventional duck eggs; those ones can go through a lot without dying.

He was a good test case, even though I was hoping for better.

I'm just making sure, since there are some that believe that all eggs that cannot hatch on their own are "supposed" to die and then don't help them. They allow perfectly good chicks to die this way, simply because some might be deformed. I've even tried to keep alive the deformed ones; those that were too bad died pretty quickly on their own.
One of my first chickens was actually a "special needs" chick that hatched with my third grade class's educational incubation. She was born with her one leg sticking out at a right angle at the "knee" joint so that it never bore weight, and I got her since I had the fewest chickens already. She lived for years on my farm, doing all the normal things that hens do until she and a turkey of mine were killed one night by a weasel. Ducks I think would have a harder time with leg issues because they are heavier birds usually, sort of like my first emu, which ended up unable to walk. We were starting to consider whether he'd have to be put down when he died suddenly, but he didn't seem to be suffering despite being unable to walk. He ate well and moved around in his own way, even took a dust bath and came with me to the park the day before he died -he seemed completely fine. He was also a pretty good teaching tool to help the kids at the park learn about animals and understanding those [people or animals] with disabilities. They all loved him very much and I hope he was a positive influence, even if his life was shorter than most.
I'm sorry you lost him, though, that's always really sad.