duck eggs

holliedures_

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i’ve noticed multiple air sacs forming on slme of my fertile duck eggs then one had brown liquid on the shell of it does this mean that they have died and should i stop incubation. it might be hard to see all the air sacs. they all only had one a few days ago
 

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Hello,
How may days have they been in the incubator, and can you see any veins forming on the inside of the egg?
for quite a while they where will mum before but she left them maybe 20-25 days, i could see veins on most
 
Ok. If they have been in the incubator for 20-25 days, the I would just leave them all in since they are so close to their due date.

But at this point, if they don't have any veins forming, you can throw them out.
 
I haven't seen brown before but I have had some eggs where there was a bluish grey blot on the egg from liquid in the eggs staining the shell. The stain was caused by decay inside the egg after the embryo died. If you have any liquid leeching through the shell and discoloring it I'd say the embryo died and there's decay occuring. You are at some risk of the egg exploding because a decaying egg is a rotton egg. Since you're ready for lockdown you can candle and look for movement or just check to see if the egg stays warm when you've had it out for a few minutes. If it cools off it died. I'd pitch it if candling doesn't show any movement (and it's hard to imagine it will). If you decide to keep incubating it I'd at least put it in something like a lunch sack or bakery bag so cleanup is easier if it does pop. Normally a rotten egg will have a funky cheese smell. But duck ang goose eggs have thicker shells and it's much less noticeable than it is with chicken eggs. Fortunately that means the egg spontaneously exploding is rarer too.

Also, your eggs should mostly be full of duckling at this point . You'll probably only be able to see anything at the end where the air cell is. The air cell should also not move. If what you're describing looks more like a lava lamp than a big dark mass filling most of the egg there probably isn't a duckling there.
 
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I haven't seen brown before but I have had some eggs where there was a bluish grey blot on the egg from liquid in the eggs staining the shell. The stain was caused by decay inside the egg after the embryo died. If you have any liquid leeching through the shell and discoloring it I'd say the embryo died and there's decay occuring. You are at some risk of the egg exploding because a decaying egg is a rotton egg. Since you're ready for lockdown you can candle and look for movement or just check to see if the egg stays warm when you've had it out for a few minutes. If it cools off it died. I'd pitch it if candling doesn't show any movement (and it's hard to imagine it will). If you decide to keep incubating it I'd at least put it in something like a lunch sack or bakery bag so cleanup is easier if it does pop. Normally a rotten egg will have a funky cheese smell. But duck ang goose eggs have thicker shells and it's much less noticeable than it is with chicken eggs. Fortunately that means the egg spontaneously exploding is rarer too.

Also, your eggs should mostly be full of duckling at this point . You'll probably only be able to see anything at the end where the air cell is. The air cell should also not move. If what you're describing looks more like a lava lamp than a big dark mass filling most of the egg there probably isn't a duckling there.
ok thank you so much, my dad cracked open the eggs that was bleeding/leaking i found an article and a youtube video telling me to do it basically he said there was a duckling in there but was dead you could tell according to the video i couldn’t look at it. what do you think might have caused this could have it been too hot for them when i removed them from mum. and yes they go cold when removed from heat. i’m heart broken if i’m honest
 
here is a site about chickens, I'm not sure if it is quite the same for ducks.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/development-of-a-chicken-embryo-day-by-day.72537/


It's a good start at least. I know ducks take about 28 days and this article says 21 for chickens. There is a video of movement at 11 days.

Maybe by the end of the weekend I'll see something move. I noticed my WH brooding on the 4th but she may have started the day before.

I'm just keeping an eye out because she left the nest a bit long this morning and most of the eggs weren't really warm to the touch anymore. I'm not interfering, just monitoring the situation.
 
Optimal temperature for duck egg incubation is 99.5F. Too hot is worse than too cool. Once you get over about 104 the embryo takes damage and will die.
If the egg cools too much it will die, but can survive dropping to 75 for a few days. Basically cooler temperatures slow development. But what's happening in the duckling's body is like a choreographed dance. Cooler temperatures slow most of the development down, but if it's too cool for too long things get out of sync. When that happens the embryo can die, and even if it doesn't the duckling can have developmental deformities if it does hatch. It's possible the duck abandoned the eggs because there was something that indicated to her the first hatch was going wrong.

It was still good to try to salvage it, but you can only do so much. You did what you were capable of doing and you didn't make anything worse than it was. You don't have any reason to feel bad about the eggs not hatching, but if you're feeling bad about how cruel nature is sometimes try to remember that there's balance out there. Not everything is bad and nothing is ever all bad.
 

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