Duck Embryos Dying late in Incubation

[basiljowii]

we’ve been trying to incubate duck eggs for about two and a half months now with no success. We have gotten to day 26 and then the ducklings would just die. The temperature we’ve tried incubating them at is 37.5 degrees Celsius and the humidity is 50%. We’ve had about 15 fertilised eggs that look extremely promising and would show lots of movement. Recently one of the duck eggs has died at day 26 of incubation. When we put it in lockdown we checked to see if it was moving and it was and it was responding to touch and noise (humidity in lockdown was 70%) The day after (Today) we walked into the incubator room and we could smell the duck egg and checked to see if it was still alive and it wasn’t. Is there anything we are doing wrong or is there anything that could be causing this?

 

[nuthatched]

Are these your own breeding stock? What's their diet?

 

[basiljowii]

Are these your own breeding stock? What's their diet?

Yeah its my own flocks eggs, they have a mix of corn/pellets, mealworms and lettuce and grit if necessary.

 

[mcdze]

at the risk of sounding preachy, its a mistake to mess with the eggs or incubator in the last week of incubation other than to quickly unplug or remove a turner and get the water level set .. try to have the house/room at a warm un-airconditioned state when you open the bator to prep it for the final stretch, and again, work quick and gentle .. now is not the time to candle or handle the eggs, especially not several times a day, or change temps or adjust humidity 15 times .. set it up, and forget it till they hatch .. what can happen with too much handling or changes is it upsets the pip and zip process, and alittle is all it takes, if they 'stall' they can wind up suffocating ... hence the 'lockdown' idea, in fact, imo if its late in the game and you didnt do it early enough it does more damage than good to try to set it up for lockdown after theyre pipped and setting up to zip and emerge, just let it be lol .. so, that would be my assessment of an inordinate amount of dead chicks in the shell ..

 

[nuthatched]

Yeah its my own flocks eggs, they have a mix of corn/pellets, mealworms and lettuce and grit if necessary.

How much stuff other than the pellets?
What's the nutrition on the duck pellets? It sounds like they're getting too many treats in their diet that's affecting egg health

 

[basiljowii]

at the risk of sounding preachy, its a mistake to mess with the eggs or incubator in the last week of incubation other than to quickly unplug or remove a turner and get the water level set .. try to have the house/room at a warm un-airconditioned state when you open the bator to prep it for the final stretch, and again, work quick and gentle .. now is not the time to candle or handle the eggs, especially not several times a day, or change temps or adjust humidity 15 times .. set it up, and forget it till they hatch .. what can happen with too much handling or changes is it upsets the pip and zip process, and alittle is all it takes, if they 'stall' they can wind up suffocating ... hence the 'lockdown' idea, in fact, imo if its late in the game and you didnt do it early enough it does more damage than good to try to set it up for lockdown after theyre pipped and setting up to zip and emerge, just let it be lol .. so, that would be my assessment of an inordinate amount of dead chicks in the shell ..

We'll try that too, we rarely get the eggs out of the incubator as we can usually see the embryo moving if we shine a dull torch through a side of the incubator. Ive seen people recommending putting the eggs in lockdown on day 25, is that too soon or too late?

 

[basiljowii]

How much stuff other than the pellets?
What's the nutrition on the duck pellets? It sounds like they're getting too many treats in their diet that's affecting egg health

I can't remember what the nutrition is off the top of my head And we'll try cutting back on the treats for them. What they have varies, somedays they will have pellets and the mealworms (I think the mealworms are coated in protein but I may be wrong) and on others they might have some lettuce too.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I know this thread is a couple weeks old but the other posters bring up good points. Especially @nuthatched. As I was reading the initial post. Breeder nutrition was the first thing that came to mind.
In order for embryos to develop the strength to hatch on their own, the must have good nutrition. If the mothers aren't getting optimal nutrition, that can't be in the egg to feed the embryo.
Many diets, even if fed an entirely commercial ration are sufficient for egg laying but insufficient for hatching.
There a range of minerals needed in good supply but essential amino acids and vitamins, especially A, D and E must be relatively high.

 

[basiljowii]

I know this thread is a couple weeks old but the other posters bring up good points. Especially @nuthatched. As I was reading the initial post. Breeder nutrition was the first thing that came to mind.
In order for embryos to develop the strength to hatch on their own, the must have good nutrition. If the mothers aren't getting optimal nutrition, that can't be in the egg to feed the embryo.
Many diets, even if fed an entirely commercial ration are sufficient for egg laying but insufficient for hatching.
There a range of minerals needed in good supply but essential amino acids and vitamins, especially A, D and E must be relatively high

The ducks eat: Lettuce, Sunflower seeds, Pellets and Calcium/Protein coated mealworms and occasionally live worms (They don't have all of this every day most of the time its 1-2 times a week) . We've also tried fertile eggs from another flock which didn't live past day 10 I think. One of the ducklings that died late in development (day 27) we actually got out of the shell to see if anything was wrong with it and caused it to die and we couldn't see anything that was visually wrong with it.