Egg Development question:

[CarleeAnn]

So I was just curious about how quickly embryos develop into an egg and then into the baby- I was just reading a short explanation and it seemed accurate but then it said;

"As the hatching day approaches, the duck and his siblings are almost fully developed, and work to synchronize their hatching by communicating with each other from inside their eggs. From there, they can produce audible clicking sounds, which signal to less-developed ducks that they must speed up their metabolisms to catch up with developing. The hen may even join in with clucking sounds that send a similar message. This synchronization allows the eggs to hatch around the same time -- a time frame that lasts several hours, or even a full day."

Has anyone heard of this? It sounds really interesting but I can find any credible articles or sources supporting this! If someone could provide a study about developing chicks in an egg and what they perceive that would be super interesting to me. I know that sound is important to human babies in the womb, so I don't see why this wouldn't be true, but I don't want to believe just anything I read. Could just be a speculation and I don't want to start spreading false information.

Thanks!

 

[Crazy for Chickens!]

I haven't ever had ducks, but I wouldnt believe that idea. I don't think the duck inside the egg has control of how fast it develops.....

 

[CarleeAnn]

I haven't ever had ducks, but I wouldnt believe that idea. I don't think the duck inside the egg has control of how fast it develops.....

That's what I was thinking. But I am just reluctant to discredit it because it seems possible that perhaps the author could have misinterpreted a natural uptake process of nutrients that have to do with metabolism that are cued by vibrations, such as the noise from other babies that they make anyways when beginning to hatch. There have been experimental treatments for humans where "Whole body vibration has been shown to boost resting metabolism". So it's a theory that is going around!

 

[CarleeAnn]

I found this article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ref/10.1080/00071668.2014.1000822?scroll=top
that seems pretty scholarly and has good references and sources. But I don't like the lack of elaboration on the control group and what other factors could have been involved involuntarily. It just doesn't seem conclusive. And I wonder if it is even a humane experiment with the mortality rate of the sound-exposed group.

Just something interesting I want to share with everyone! If I find out more information I will post it here and would love to hear others opinions, theories, and knowledge.

 

[lomine]

I wasn't able to read the full article so I'm wondering how they treated the incubating eggs otherwise. Were they from the same breeding stock? Stored the same way? Did they closely monitor the humidity and temperature in the incubators and keep them all exactly the same? There are so many factors involved with hatching eggs.

Anyway, I know many people say that the peeping of the chicks will encourage the others to start hatching/hatch faster. That I can believe. However, I find it hard to believe that a chick or ducking could somehow will itself to absorb it's yolk faster.

 

[CarleeAnn]

I wasn't able to read the full article so I'm wondering how they treated the incubating eggs otherwise. Were they from the same breeding stock? Stored the same way? Did they closely monitor the humidity and temperature in the incubators and keep them all exactly the same? There are so many factors involved with hatching eggs.

Anyway, I know many people say that the peeping of the chicks will encourage the others to start hatching/hatch faster. That I can believe. However, I find it hard to believe that a chick or ducking could somehow will itself to absorb it's yolk faster.

I agree. They didn't elaborate on the conditions so there could have been many different variables that influenced the eggs hatching! It would be interesting to take the same batch of eggs and split them, record the decibel and sound of the breeds peeping (from a previous batch) and play it back to one group, maybe individually, but the other group would have to be individual too so no sound is heard.

I also don't think ducks are cable of controlling there autonomic functions like metabolism, but maybe the same experiment could be done and replace sound with just vibration to see if the theory is true that vibrations increase metabolism. And how much/many vibrations a singular chick makes when hatching normally.

I feel like encouraging babies to hatch faster makes sense too, but wouldn't that be counterproductive if a chick is not developed yet? Is that a common problem, that an underdeveloped chick hatched at the same time as other healthy ones? I always thought that a "runt" would also hatch last or later.

 

[lomine]

I don't know about getting slower eggs to hatch sooner. I figure it's natures way of getting them to come out around the same time so they'll all be ready to leave the nest around the same time. With incubators we just leave the eggs longer. But I would think a broody would abandon late hatching eggs in favor of the chicks that have already hatched. In nature those late chicks would be considered weak so survival of the fittest weeds them out of the gene pool. Just a theory.

 

[CarleeAnn]

I don't know about getting slower eggs to hatch sooner. I figure it's natures way of getting them to come out around the same time so they'll all be ready to leave the nest around the same time. With incubators we just leave the eggs longer. But I would think a broody would abandon late hatching eggs in favor of the chicks that have already hatched. In nature those late chicks would be considered weak so survival of the fittest weeds them out of the gene pool. Just a theory.

Makes sense to me! But that's why if somehow weaker chicks did hatch sooner because they were "encouraged" then it would just perpetuate weaker chicks, but I may not fully understand. And some, I guess the true weakest, get left behind.

 

[lomine]

Well, if it hatches and survives it can't be that weak, right? I guess it's kind of hard since some of the variables that may cause a late hatch could be due to human error in the incubation process. Maybe those chick would have hatched 'on time' under a broody hen.

 

[CarleeAnn]

That's true too! It's a lot to consider and I guess we won't truly understand until we hatch out of eggs, huh? Haha