- Nov 16, 2015
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I have to say i feel like a lot of the fuss about humidity and about lockdown with duck eggs anyway is not as important in my experience as people seem to think.
for natural hatches i have ducks who will not go swimming or get wet at all when cincibating,mthey just sit on the nest and barely leave it to eat even…their ducklings hatch just fine
amd other ducks who get off the nest wnd swim multiple times per day, then taking their dripping wet selves back onto the eggs…which also hatch just fine
I've incubated eggs, in a home made incubator with an incandescent lightbulb in a chilly bin (insulated box you put picnic food in) and i just basically dipped my hands in water and flicked it over them each day, all hatched just fine.
the only time i have ever seen eggs hatch with signs the humidity was too highmor low were all naturally incubated eggs, and the last ones were eggs that a mallard duck let other ducks lay in her nest over christmas. I was checking the nest and removing new eggs, but obviously not enough as after she hatched 5 healthy ducklings, she had a number of eggs with live developing embryos still well away from hatch. I put these under an experienced khaki campbell mother as my incubator light had broken and i didnt have a way to incubate properly. Unfortunately said experienced khaki campbell was nesting right behind two muscovies who had started nesting and had a nest with infertile eggs in it. The KC and the muscovy girls were moving eggs between their nests and hile in the muscovy nest the eggs were under two very keen but inexperienced ducks. Those eggs i moved back to thenkhaki campbell but some went back under the muscovies and ended up needing assisted hatch either because they were not progressing or because the two muscovies were crushing the half hatched egg. Of those eggs a few had huge air sacs and were sticky and having membrane sticking to them…..they had pipped externally and were trying to hatch but they still had blood vessels ith blood in them and unabsorbed yolks and at the same time were getting glued to their egg shells. I got them all out ok, but it seemed to me like there were humidity issues there… maybe it was because we have hqd much more rain than normal this year, or maybe because if the two ducks on one nest. In my experience two ducks sharing a nest is a recoie for dead ducklings or assisted hatches
i now have this single egg a mum abandoned which is kinda filthy and as a result i have been very very sparing with any water as i can just imagine thr dirt on thr egg getting wet wnd inviting nasties to grow there. I dont want to wash it as i think the bloom is the only thing keeping that dirty egg from turning into bacteria inside the egg with the embryo. So i have sprinkled it a couple of times with colloidal silver which i have run out of, and then out some sterile water on it a couple,of times, butnit is a mostly dry incubation. We are probably about 3 weeks in, the duckling is under a heqt plate with a temperature controller hatched and it is struggling to keep it to temp so is lower thwn id like, but trying to twoe the temperature probe to the top ofmthe egg it isnt sticking well so i have the temo controller at a max of 35.8 as once it hits that the heat plate is switched off but it can go up and little before it goes down. And if the probe were to fall off the egg then the temperature will go well past 5.8…in other words if the temp probe falls off and i don’t realise in time, if the temperature controller is set to allow it to go higher than 35.8 it may well cook and kill the duckling. There are no incubators locally that i can buy, any i order online wont arrive before the ducklings hatch date so i have no other options, for this embryo.
on top of all thwt it was an egg i oiled to supposedly make it unable to support w duckling embryo growing (no oxygen) and placed under a duck to keep her on the nest for when the eggs which were under another duck but up to 2 weeks behind the rest of the nest needed a duck to put them under, whe wouod be sittingl the other oiled egg did not develop at all as i expected. Unsure how this one has managed to…maybe life just finds a way, as they said in jurassic park, lol
but anyway it is a dry incubation, on an egg with a million reasons not to hatch thwt have no relationship to humidity. If it hatches i will post an update. Due the first few days of march 23..
its still going strong as of today.
i also wonder if incubator eggs may sometimes give up or die before, during or soon after hqtch because there is no sound of a mummy duck there for them. I have had incubator ducklings hatch and seem fine but fail for no reason, and then you pick them up and twokmto and cuddle and they rapidly come right. It seems to me if ducklings are so strongly programmed to imprint and so strongly inclined to need tto know their mother is there all of the time, that maybe this survival instinct could result in a duckling who is incubated and hatched in an incubator, to give up if they cannot hear or sense any verbal or physical contact and comfort from a larger creature than them (who must be mum). Maybe some will carry on regardless as they have a stronger survival instinct. Maybe like people, some ducklings are more emotionally driven and if they hatch and everything is physiologically fine, but there is no noise, touch, or presence of wny larger creature to imprint on who they can decide is mum, maybe they give up… a duckling in the wild which hatches fine but has no mother (ie she has left the nest) will die..
so maybe some ducklings in incubators suffer hatching problems because they have not had the sound or presence of a mother and with no evidence there is a mother there for them, they give up or stop maintaining homeostasis and that results in failed hatches or hatching with things not right, ie sticky duckings, air sacs too big ormtoo small or ducklings which just sont seem strong enough (but maybe actually just are not motivated or have given up)
its just a theory, but if anyone is incubating ducklings and not getting greqt hatch rates and all the incubqtion metrics seem fine, maybe try putting a radio or tv by the incubator and when they are close to hatch insteadmof locking down, open it and talk to thr hatchlings.
i know a lot of people are really concerned about opening incubqtors during lock down. I can only speak from my experience, I have hatched,somewhere around 100 eggs in an incubator which only fit 6-7 and through every hatch i opened and closed the lid like it was grand central station and I can honestly say I have not lost a single hatching duckling due to doing this.
i have had hatching ducklings who i had not been qround when they were hatching or too busy to check in on them much, who would get distressed and crying for no apparent reason, and pickingnup the egg and talkng to them, they would settle down and carry on with their hatc and hatch just fine. And some thwt literally seemed to need to hear my voice on a regular basis to keep going, almost like i was their cheerleader lol. I just cant help but think about how distressed young ducklings get if separated from mum….and how built in this need is, as young ducklings, to know mum is there, i think this need starts before the hatch, how far before who knows?
for natural hatches i have ducks who will not go swimming or get wet at all when cincibating,mthey just sit on the nest and barely leave it to eat even…their ducklings hatch just fine
amd other ducks who get off the nest wnd swim multiple times per day, then taking their dripping wet selves back onto the eggs…which also hatch just fine
I've incubated eggs, in a home made incubator with an incandescent lightbulb in a chilly bin (insulated box you put picnic food in) and i just basically dipped my hands in water and flicked it over them each day, all hatched just fine.
the only time i have ever seen eggs hatch with signs the humidity was too highmor low were all naturally incubated eggs, and the last ones were eggs that a mallard duck let other ducks lay in her nest over christmas. I was checking the nest and removing new eggs, but obviously not enough as after she hatched 5 healthy ducklings, she had a number of eggs with live developing embryos still well away from hatch. I put these under an experienced khaki campbell mother as my incubator light had broken and i didnt have a way to incubate properly. Unfortunately said experienced khaki campbell was nesting right behind two muscovies who had started nesting and had a nest with infertile eggs in it. The KC and the muscovy girls were moving eggs between their nests and hile in the muscovy nest the eggs were under two very keen but inexperienced ducks. Those eggs i moved back to thenkhaki campbell but some went back under the muscovies and ended up needing assisted hatch either because they were not progressing or because the two muscovies were crushing the half hatched egg. Of those eggs a few had huge air sacs and were sticky and having membrane sticking to them…..they had pipped externally and were trying to hatch but they still had blood vessels ith blood in them and unabsorbed yolks and at the same time were getting glued to their egg shells. I got them all out ok, but it seemed to me like there were humidity issues there… maybe it was because we have hqd much more rain than normal this year, or maybe because if the two ducks on one nest. In my experience two ducks sharing a nest is a recoie for dead ducklings or assisted hatches
i now have this single egg a mum abandoned which is kinda filthy and as a result i have been very very sparing with any water as i can just imagine thr dirt on thr egg getting wet wnd inviting nasties to grow there. I dont want to wash it as i think the bloom is the only thing keeping that dirty egg from turning into bacteria inside the egg with the embryo. So i have sprinkled it a couple of times with colloidal silver which i have run out of, and then out some sterile water on it a couple,of times, butnit is a mostly dry incubation. We are probably about 3 weeks in, the duckling is under a heqt plate with a temperature controller hatched and it is struggling to keep it to temp so is lower thwn id like, but trying to twoe the temperature probe to the top ofmthe egg it isnt sticking well so i have the temo controller at a max of 35.8 as once it hits that the heat plate is switched off but it can go up and little before it goes down. And if the probe were to fall off the egg then the temperature will go well past 5.8…in other words if the temp probe falls off and i don’t realise in time, if the temperature controller is set to allow it to go higher than 35.8 it may well cook and kill the duckling. There are no incubators locally that i can buy, any i order online wont arrive before the ducklings hatch date so i have no other options, for this embryo.
on top of all thwt it was an egg i oiled to supposedly make it unable to support w duckling embryo growing (no oxygen) and placed under a duck to keep her on the nest for when the eggs which were under another duck but up to 2 weeks behind the rest of the nest needed a duck to put them under, whe wouod be sittingl the other oiled egg did not develop at all as i expected. Unsure how this one has managed to…maybe life just finds a way, as they said in jurassic park, lol
but anyway it is a dry incubation, on an egg with a million reasons not to hatch thwt have no relationship to humidity. If it hatches i will post an update. Due the first few days of march 23..
its still going strong as of today.
i also wonder if incubator eggs may sometimes give up or die before, during or soon after hqtch because there is no sound of a mummy duck there for them. I have had incubator ducklings hatch and seem fine but fail for no reason, and then you pick them up and twokmto and cuddle and they rapidly come right. It seems to me if ducklings are so strongly programmed to imprint and so strongly inclined to need tto know their mother is there all of the time, that maybe this survival instinct could result in a duckling who is incubated and hatched in an incubator, to give up if they cannot hear or sense any verbal or physical contact and comfort from a larger creature than them (who must be mum). Maybe some will carry on regardless as they have a stronger survival instinct. Maybe like people, some ducklings are more emotionally driven and if they hatch and everything is physiologically fine, but there is no noise, touch, or presence of wny larger creature to imprint on who they can decide is mum, maybe they give up… a duckling in the wild which hatches fine but has no mother (ie she has left the nest) will die..
so maybe some ducklings in incubators suffer hatching problems because they have not had the sound or presence of a mother and with no evidence there is a mother there for them, they give up or stop maintaining homeostasis and that results in failed hatches or hatching with things not right, ie sticky duckings, air sacs too big ormtoo small or ducklings which just sont seem strong enough (but maybe actually just are not motivated or have given up)
its just a theory, but if anyone is incubating ducklings and not getting greqt hatch rates and all the incubqtion metrics seem fine, maybe try putting a radio or tv by the incubator and when they are close to hatch insteadmof locking down, open it and talk to thr hatchlings.
i know a lot of people are really concerned about opening incubqtors during lock down. I can only speak from my experience, I have hatched,somewhere around 100 eggs in an incubator which only fit 6-7 and through every hatch i opened and closed the lid like it was grand central station and I can honestly say I have not lost a single hatching duckling due to doing this.
i have had hatching ducklings who i had not been qround when they were hatching or too busy to check in on them much, who would get distressed and crying for no apparent reason, and pickingnup the egg and talkng to them, they would settle down and carry on with their hatc and hatch just fine. And some thwt literally seemed to need to hear my voice on a regular basis to keep going, almost like i was their cheerleader lol. I just cant help but think about how distressed young ducklings get if separated from mum….and how built in this need is, as young ducklings, to know mum is there, i think this need starts before the hatch, how far before who knows?
