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That's pretty much exactly what I was going to say - I have really good luck with very low humidity (around 30-45% during incubation, and then bumped up to around 75% at hatch time) for duck eggs.
I pack my duck eggs tightly into my Octagon 20 incubators - I can fit between 22 and 25 Indian Runner eggs in each, and they're pretty much vertical, with no tilt to them when I shove that many in there. I do not have lots of late deaths like the original poster is experiencing (well, the one time I did, it was because they started hatching four days too early before I bumped the humidity up and they shrink-wrapped a day or two before I even realized they'd pipped). The way a broody duck kicks and shoves her eggs around to turn them when things are done "naturally", I'm sure some of them occasionally end up vertical or even upside down for awhile, smooshed into the nest, and I don't think it really matters how the eggs are turned (unless you're incubating something finicky *Calls...coughs*
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My money's on a humidity problem. Whenever I sell fertile eggs locally, I tell the buyer that it's a myth that duck eggs need a higher humidity than chicken eggs do, and that it's completely counteractive to incubate them at a high humidity and mist them; they can be incubated at the same (sometimes lower) humidity level as chicken eggs - and all the people I've sold eggs to locally have had great hatches!
That's pretty much exactly what I was going to say - I have really good luck with very low humidity (around 30-45% during incubation, and then bumped up to around 75% at hatch time) for duck eggs.
I pack my duck eggs tightly into my Octagon 20 incubators - I can fit between 22 and 25 Indian Runner eggs in each, and they're pretty much vertical, with no tilt to them when I shove that many in there. I do not have lots of late deaths like the original poster is experiencing (well, the one time I did, it was because they started hatching four days too early before I bumped the humidity up and they shrink-wrapped a day or two before I even realized they'd pipped). The way a broody duck kicks and shoves her eggs around to turn them when things are done "naturally", I'm sure some of them occasionally end up vertical or even upside down for awhile, smooshed into the nest, and I don't think it really matters how the eggs are turned (unless you're incubating something finicky *Calls...coughs*
My money's on a humidity problem. Whenever I sell fertile eggs locally, I tell the buyer that it's a myth that duck eggs need a higher humidity than chicken eggs do, and that it's completely counteractive to incubate them at a high humidity and mist them; they can be incubated at the same (sometimes lower) humidity level as chicken eggs - and all the people I've sold eggs to locally have had great hatches!
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