Duckling died

[monzon03]

Hi I hope everyone is okay, I’d really like some reassurance if possible as I’ve been overthinking this all day, I work in a preschool and we sometimes hatch ducklings through a company which delivers the eggs a couple of days before they hatch, I also have experience with hatching ducklings from the beginning myself. This time we got the eggs delivered and everything was fine, they began pipping and zipping normally and the humidity and temperature was at the right levels. After the third duckling hatched, it was time for me to go home from work, I did notice that it was breathing quite heavily and through its mouth however I thought it was just tired from hatching. It was then time for me to go home from work and I knew that I had to leave the ducks in the incubator until they were dry and the others had hatched. When I came back early in the morning all the ducklings had hatched which was 5 of them altogether however the third one (which was a runner duck) was laying dead on the bottom of the incubator. I love animals so much and I’ve been feeling so guilty that maybe I shouldn’t have kept the others in the incubator because maybe they accidentally suffocated it? I know it’s impossible to know but Please could someone tell me what’s the most likely cause of a hatchling dying so soon. Thankyou

 

[Debbie292d]

So sorry to hear. I've hatched hundreds of chicken eggs and only a few duck eggs, and never had one dead in the incubator, albeit I was 50/50 on assisting some with air cells on the sides that pipped and never got out.

It should have been strong enough though to get out of a possible smothering situation, so I kind of doubt it. Had that happened here, I'd assume something was wrong with it and gosh knows why it had the energy to make it to hatching. Usually, if one dies halfway through incubation, that's what I figure, something was wrong with it, and thankful then that it didn't hatch.

You aren't to blame a bit. Those school hatchings are sometimes problematic, as you don't know if a janitor, another teacher, or someone opened the incubator and perhaps thought they were helping and weren't.

Regardless, these little things are so precious, but sometimes they just weren't made to make it.