Failed hatch and so much guilt, please help

[BokBokBadger]

Welcome!
Do you have at least one calibrated thermometer in your bator?
A salt tested humidity gauge?

Hi, glad to be here
We set the temperature on the bator itself and then used a digital thermometer to double check every now and again.
We didn't use a humidity gauge at all just kept the little water dish in the center topped up. I know now that this was a mistake. I'll add a photo of the bator...

 

[Old McRonald]

In a nutshell the yellow liquid that hardened like a rock sounds like your humidity was too high. I had similar results with some chicks years ago. You want to lose 13% of the eggs initial weight throughout incubation. You can do this by monitoring air cell size or by getting a digital scale that will weigh to tenths of a gram and track weight loss. Depending on your location recommended humidity levels can be misleading, I'm having great luck hatching call ducks with 25% humidity which many people would cringe at but I monitor weight loss and I'm getting great results. If my weights aren't near the target weight I can increase or decrease humidty as needed to get them back on track.

 

[BokBokBadger]

In a nutshell the yellow liquid that hardened like a rock sounds like your humidity was too high. I had similar results with some chicks years ago. You want to lose 13% of the eggs initial weight throughout incubation. You can do this by monitoring air cell size or by getting a digital scale that will weigh to tenths of a gram and track weight loss. Depending on your location recommended humidity levels can be misleading, I'm having great luck hatching call ducks with 25% humidity which many people would cringe at but I monitor weight loss and I'm getting great results. If my weights aren't near the target weight I can increase or decrease humidty as needed to get them back on track.

Great info! I'll get a digital scale ordered as soon as possible thank you so much!

 

[Kgbao]

In a nutshell the yellow liquid that hardened like a rock sounds like your humidity was too high. I had similar results with some chicks years ago. You want to lose 13% of the eggs initial weight throughout incubation. You can do this by monitoring air cell size or by getting a digital scale that will weigh to tenths of a gram and track weight loss. Depending on your location recommended humidity levels can be misleading, I'm having great luck hatching call ducks with 25% humidity which many people would cringe at but I monitor weight loss and I'm getting great results. If my weights aren't near the target weight I can increase or decrease humidty as needed to get them back on track.

Thanks for responding, I was hoping eventually one of you hatching experienced members would pop in.

 

[Nksg75]

Hi everyone, first time poster here (or any forum for that matter) but I've been a long time lurker! I'm absolutely devastated today and wanted to maybe get some feedback from you knowledgeable people. Even if it's to tell me I was wrong in what I did, hopefully I'll get some closure to allow me to heal and try again.


BIT OF A BACK STORY:
I've wanted to successfully incubate something since I was a small child, always bringing eggs home that'd fallen from nests (usually broken but I lived in hope) and even convinced my mum to let me put some free range chicken eggs under my desk lamp which obviously was a huge fail and heartbreaking disappointment for childhood me.
Since then I've grown up (somewhat ) and have three allotment plots with some ex battery chickens and two Aylesbury duck ladies. We originally had three ladies and a glorious Silver Appleyard drake but he was taken along with one of his ladies around 7 weeks ago by a hungry fox (hungry enough to take on electric fencing). We didn't realise until two weeks later that we could've attempted to incubate some eggs to maybe carry on the drake's legacy. Knowing it was a long shot (eggs were then at least 14days old), we hastily bought a bator and popped nine eggs in that had been sitting around in the shed since the event. We lovingly turned them, kept the little humidity dish filled up with water and candled them after day 10. We were left with three viable eggs which was more than we could've hoped for! One gave up on day 26.

MAIN POINT:
It got to day 30 and the air sacs had looked perfect before but now they looked as though they had black shadows across most of them and when the egg was moved you could see something swishing around like liquid inside, this was visible without candling! I panicked and paced all day, reading everything possible on here and came to the conclusion that they might have broken their yolks or the membrane or that the humidity had been too high and they were drowning. I made a safety hole at the very highest point of the air sac and immediately saw yellow/clear liquid coming out of the tiny pinprick hole. Through all of this the eggs were rocking very gently and I could see what looked somewhat like internal pipping movements but it was so hard to tell with the dark shadows and liquid swishing around I decided to open the air cell. What I saw then was that the sac had been full of the yellow/clear runny liquid and there was also a lot of brown liquid around the edges. The ducklings appeared to have pipped internally with their egg teeth but their membrane was SO sticky, stuck to them like glue and solidifying, it looked like they couldn't get through. One was malpositioned, her head was up the other end and somehow the membrane wasn't attached to the side of the egg at all, just stuck to her as though it's come away and the air sac had extended across the side of the shell. I applied coconut oil to the exposed membrane which was clear and had lots of veins and decided to leave them for a few hours. I couldn't wait a few hours, it was so distressing, they were desperately trying to push through and they looked shrink wrapped although I couldn't find a picture on here that matched what I saw, they just looked like they were tightly wrapped in cling film. I decided to widen the very small hole they'd made so that their beaks could get through, cleared away the sticky stuff from their nostrils and beaks, reapplied coconut oil and left them alone for two hours. The one who had been malpositioned was very still, she made very few yawning/chewing faces and the sticky stuff on her head was rock solid. The other guy was yawning, trying to stretch, chewing but there was no peeping from either of them. I came back two hours later to reapply the oil and they had passed away. Their membranes were clear, veins had receeded but were rock solid. It was like they were stuck in concrete. It broke me. I knew it had to be my fault, something I did. I opened them up because I had to see if there was anything else that might be caused it. They were fully formed, gorgeous little black and yellow babies the only things I noticed that seemed unusual were that their heads were huge in comparison to their bodies, their eyes were shut, most of the membrane on one side of the egg was completely stuck to the shell and the remaining area was full of dark brown liquid with some of the shell looking black. There was no nasty smell and their yolk sacs were absolutely huge, looked like they were three separate blobs for each duck and the one who was malpositioned, hers had definitely ruptured somehow.
I'm absolutely riddled with guilt and the deepest sadness I've felt in a long time. If someone could shed some light on what I did wrong, please do, I need to hear it! I know I should've got a humidity reader, I know I probably should've waited longer, I made so many mistakes and I don't feel I'll ever feel ok about it. I'm now torn between giving away the bator and brooder that was set up ready or forcing myself to learn and try again. Can't even stand to look at the bator so it's gone in a cupboard and the brooder is out of sight. Ugh.
Please help
If you've read this far, thank you so, so much

Let me just say, you are not alone! I also have guilt and I know most people on the hatching forums have failers! It’s often on the ones we want to hatch the most that seem to break our hearts!
I have never hatched duck eggs, only chicken, quail and turkey eggs. IF I recall correctly I believe duck eggs require slightly different treatment as far as humidity(I read about people spritzing duck eggs with water) why I have no idea.
Let me see if I can find that article and possibly post it for you.
Please wait for advice from knowledgeable duck hatchers!! Like I said I have never hatched a duck egg before, so my advice could be wrong about the spritzing(humidity).
Also, please don’t give up! You tried, and that is so much more than some people would do.
I know it’s heartbreaking, however the feeling you WILL have when you are successful next time will be worth it!
Can you tell us what incubator you bought?
Did you use another thermometer besides the one that came with the incubator?

 

[BokBokBadger]

Let me just say, you are not alone! I also have guilt and I know most people on the hatching forums have failers! It’s often on the ones we want to hatch the most that seem to break our hearts!
I have never hatched duck eggs, only chicken, quail and turkey eggs. IF I recall correctly I believe duck eggs require slightly different treatment as far as humidity(I read about people spritzing duck eggs with water) why I have no idea.
Let me see if I can find that article and possibly post it for you.
Please wait for advice from knowledgeable duck hatchers!! Like I said I have never hatched a duck egg before, so my advice could be wrong about the spritzing(humidity).
Also, please don’t give up! You tried, and that is so much more than some people would do.
I know it’s heartbreaking, however the feeling you WILL have when you are successful next time will be worth it!
Can you tell us what incubator you bought?
Did you use another thermometer besides the one that came with the incubator?

That's a great comfort, thank you so much!
I'm feeling a bit better today and have been chatting to my allotment neighbour about possibly having some of his quail eggs to try and hatch instead but I'll definitely do my research first! I would like to try again with some duck eggs at some point, I think you're right about the spritzing! We didn't do that (didn't realise it was a thing until lockdown) but apparently it's to simulate the mother leaving the nest for a swim each day and going back to sit on them damp
Unfortunately, besides the incubator one, we only had a digital one for humans that we checked with occasionally I now know that was a huge mistake.
I'll see if I can find the link to the bator we bought...
Thanks again so much, it's such a comfort to know I'm not alone!

 

[BokBokBadger]

Let me just say, you are not alone! I also have guilt and I know most people on the hatching forums have failers! It’s often on the ones we want to hatch the most that seem to break our hearts!
I have never hatched duck eggs, only chicken, quail and turkey eggs. IF I recall correctly I believe duck eggs require slightly different treatment as far as humidity(I read about people spritzing duck eggs with water) why I have no idea.
Let me see if I can find that article and possibly post it for you.
Please wait for advice from knowledgeable duck hatchers!! Like I said I have never hatched a duck egg before, so my advice could be wrong about the spritzing(humidity).
Also, please don’t give up! You tried, and that is so much more than some people would do.
I know it’s heartbreaking, however the feeling you WILL have when you are successful next time will be worth it!
Can you tell us what incubator you bought?
Did you use another thermometer besides the one that came with the incubator?

This is the one... It was bought in a hurry
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XZDZRTC/ref=cm_sw_r_apa_i_IzDLEbYVZY88J

 

[Nksg75]

This is the one... It was bought in a hurry
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XZDZRTC/ref=cm_sw_r_apa_i_IzDLEbYVZY88J

AT first glance it has decent reviews, so who knows.
Many thermometers that are built in to the incubator are off straight out of the box.
Years ago when I bought a brinsea octagon incubator, I had to adjust it as well.
I learned this all after scouring BYC...

 

[Old McRonald]

This is the one... It was bought in a hurry
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XZDZRTC/ref=cm_sw_r_apa_i_IzDLEbYVZY88J

I think most of us have all made our fair share of mistakes, the biggest mistake is to not learn from them. Don't beat yourself up too bad, you're looking for help in the right place and sometimes the excitement just gets the best of us.

 

[BokBokBadger]

Ok so I've managed to get hold of a thermometer that also shows humidity and popped it inside the incubator, it seems the bator temperature was showing at around 2°c higher than it actually was inside. That would mean the duck eggs were at 35.5°c and the humidity reading I'm getting is way higher than I guessed so I definitely had that too high
I've got some quail eggs sat here ready to go in but I'm going to monitor temp and humidity for another 24 hours first, so I know for certain that it's right.
Is it ok to leave that thermometer inside the bator? Or should I invest in one with a probe instead?
Thanks again everyone