Egg Emergency! *update* all died :(

[katharinad]

That google picture also shows blotches. All egg do smell somewhat, but rotten eggs smell very foul with sulfur stench and want to make you throw up. That bad!

 

[katharinad]

Your pictures look close to internal piping. If nothing happens within a week then it is bad news. I know I get a little bit nervous when they are that close, because you don't see anything. All I have to remember to sit tight and just let time do its thing. Remember you never get all to hatch anyway. It never even happens in nature. You are hoping for all all, and welcome anyone that makes it.

 

[kasey08]

wow just found this i really hope you get some healthy little ducks

 

[obsidianembrace]

So, we candled all nine eggs. There were four that looked really nasty inside and looked only half full. The bottom half was full of black stuff. After a lot of debate about it, we decided to start opening them to try and understand what happened (they all smelled funky, had no movement, and looked really nasty). When we opened them there was three fully developed babies and one that looked like it died a long time ago.

1. looked just like the first one that got broken open. fully developed, ready to hatch. We have no ideas about why it died.
2. the membrane was really stuck to him, loose fluid in air bubble, water droplets on top
3. just like #1
4. developed, but the bill wasn't hard yet. Lots of thick blood all over it, loose fluid. seemed like it had been rotting for awhile. smelled awful

They were all dark colored and beautiful...

The other four (plus one that looked iffy to me) are still in the incubator. They look full (dark) up to the air bubble, where it looks yellowish with veins for about a millimeter and then becomes air bubble. Some of these had a few water droplets sticking to the top of the air bubble, is that bad? I know our humidity was high for awhile, but would that kill them? The iffy one looked like the other good ones, except for some area of it the yellowish with veins extended into for about 1/2 inch square area. You could see outlines of what looked like a foot in this part. What do you think about iffy egg?

Is there any chance that these other ducklings are alive? All the others were dead...

The incubator has been very stable today (

) so that's good. It's been hanging around 96-97 temp and 79-80 humidity (so i actually get to sleep tonight

. If I even can, I'm so worried). What do we do?!!?

Are they alive at all?

Please help!

vent: I'm really upset about this. What if they're just all dead?! I feel like I killed them by bringing them inside. All of the dead ducklings looked so ready to hatch and were just perfect. I think they died because of the huge climate change by bringing them inside. Plus, seeing all of those dead ducklings is unbelievably depressing and discouraging. We've lost 5 now and it's really upsetting. That plus other things going on is making me so stressed out. I feel like I killed them

 

[duckyfromoz]

If you still see veins they are most likely still alive. When a duckling dies the blood stops pumping around the veins and gravitates to the bottom of the egg. taking them inside may just have slowed their development for a while and they may be late hatching.

There is still some hope by the sound of things.

Dont be so hard on yourself. If you didnt bring them inside they may not have hatched anyway. It sounds like some of the already dead ones died before you brought them in anyway.

 

[tia]

Good luck with the other ones. I wouldn't be too hard on yourself - sometimes it is hard to know what the right thing to do is. If the female was not sitting on the eggs I would presume they would have gotten cold. I would have done exactly what you did.

 

[Birdcrazy]

I agree, dont be too hard on yourself. There are always quitters in a clutch, sometimes a lot and sometimes only a few

This is your duck's first clutch? I know mine had just over a 50% hatch rate on her first.
It's hard to say how the new temperature would of effected the ducklings in the end, but give them time and see. I dont think you should try opening them unless your sure they're dead/know exactly that their meant to of hatched, too.

Good luck with the hatch

 

[obsidianembrace]

Okay I feel a lot better after sleeping. Enough pep talk (thanks so much though, it helps). I want honest opinions on whether they're alive or not. The discoloration is becoming more distinct and darker. The temp dropped probably to 65-70 last night (I was so discouraged and not really willing to wake up in the middle of the night. Now I feel bad about it). That couldn't have hurt them too bad?

What would you do?

 

[FenDruadin]

I agree with the statement that if you're seeing blood veins, then they're probably alive. However, at this stage of the game you can almost always see some motion if you watch long enough. Was anything moving in there? It's often rather sluggish, and sometimes they're sleeping, but if you *do* see movement, then you know they're alive.

Remind me--how long have they incubated at this point?

Whatever happens, please don't beat yourself up about it. We all do the best we can, and sometimes the choices we make don't work out the way we hoped, but we learn what we have to and keep going. You don't know whether this was the right choice or not, and even if they all die, it may still have been their best chance.

Some things I've done that I later regretted: I let a hen sit on a nest of eggs outside their pen because I couldn't find her for two weeks and by that time I thought the best chance for the half-incubated eggs was for her to stay on them, and I thought she was well enough hidden to be reasonably safe, but she was eaten five days before her babies hatched (I was able to bring them inside and save three of them after they cooled all night). I failed to help a duckling to hatch that was trying to tell me it was drowning, but I didn't understand what I was looking at so it drowned when I could have helped it. I lost my entire first flock because I underestimated our local predators and every single one was eaten by a fox. I lost all but four out of 21 baby ducks, all fully formed, because they incubated with some rotten quail eggs and the air cells never developed (we knew the quail eggs were old, but we didn't think we had anything to lose by incubating them--and in fact about half the quail hatched, but the other half rotted and raised the humidity and killed the ducklings).

There is still hope for your eggs, and you're doing everything possible. It may or may not turn out the way you hope. But either way, keep your chin up (and keep us updated)!

 

[katharinad]

The could have been dead before you've gotten them in. Ducks tend to abandon dead eggs. Most of the time they simply throw them out and stay with the remaining ones. It could be that she decided they all were bad, so she stopped sitting on them. This does not really mean the rest is dead too. I usually see dark blotches about 12 hours before they pip. As I said that seems to be because they are turning around in the egg and rupture a few blood vessels in the membrane. In your case it was different. We are still rooting for the rest of them.