First Annual Cinco de Mayo Turkey Hatchathon- Join us! Set Day: Easter

[ChooksChick]

Well, I guess mom knew best. He's no longer with us. I want to thank everyone for all of their help and support. He was the smallest when they were born, half the size of the largest. Yesterday he was half the size of the middle one. She is a good mom, she is taking very good care of the others. Thank you!

 

[ChooksChick]

I'm bummed. I feel like I can't leave the house without being hot today. It was 94* yesterday and I had to wear jeans because I have poison ivy SOOOOOOO bad I haven't been able to shave my legs or anything. I look like Chewbacca with leprosy. I don't have any skirts that go to the ground (well, other than formal taffeta) and I'm half tempted to wear knee socks with capris...

Laugh. It's funny.

 

[yinepu]

Oh my, where is that embarrassed face smiley when you need it. Here we go:

How could I not have known that? I just always thought that chickens took 21 days and most everything else - turkeys, ducks, guineas etc., took 28. Are Muscovy's different than other ducks, or do all duck eggs take 35?

I do feel better though, knowing the added humidity won't hurt the duck eggs, and after the turkeys have hatched, I can raise the humidity a tad higher until the duck eggs lockdown as well.

I hatch out a lot of muscovys.. just got in some eggs which will go in the bator tomorrow since my girls haven't gifted me with any eggs yet (and i wanted to add in some new blood)

regular ducks take 28 days
muscovys aren't really ducks .. they are "perching water fowl".. but 99.9% of the people in the world call them ducks anyway... sort of they are but they aren't kind of thing.. and they take around 35 days for incubation

you will also hear about how hard it is to incubate muscovys.. which isn't true.. people have just been passing around a lot of bad info.. which everyone else tries and then they wonder why their muscovys die just before hatch
so forget everything you have read about how muscovys need higher humidity ..most people cite around 84%.. which isn't the HUMIDITY.. it's actually a wet bulb reading in degrees and not percentages.. and 84 º wet bulb depends on the incubation temp.. but for 99.5 º it works out to about 52.4% (i think my math is right) which is a BIG difference from 84%.. even at 84º wet bulb many people will still have them drown because just like any other bird that you incubate .. everyone has different percentages which work in THEIR home with their bators... I weigh my muscovy eggs and monitor weight loss that way.

so go ahead and incubate them at the same humidity as your turkeys or chickens... Some people mist and cool the eggs.. some don't... for me it all depends on how many I have in the bator and what kind of eggs they are incubating with.

at hatch you will want to raise the humidity up to at least 60%.. higher is better


I'm experimenting with this current batch of muscovy eggs by misting them with a different solution that plain distilled water... going to be interesting to see how they do

..

 

[HEChicken]

Thanks Yinepu for all of that information. Wow - I had NO idea they are not actually a duck but it does explain one thing. The guy I got them from had a drake and two hens and he said they are completely silent, except for the occasional hiss. I have always thought of ducks as fairly noisy so that surprised me. Now that I know they are not truly ducks, I guess that is another difference?

 

[HEChicken]

Okay, I just went to google them and now I'm wondering if the eggs I have are in fact Muscovy's. To be honest, the guy I got them from had a LOT of fowl but didn't seem overly knowledgeable about what he had. For example, he had a whole pen of "black sexings" which he proudly informed me, were never exposed to other roosters because "he won't stand for mixed breeds around his place". He tried to get me to buy some of their eggs so I could hatch out some "black sexings" of my own. Also, he didn't technically give me Muscovy eggs - he gave me Muskogee eggs

Anyways....the ducks I saw at his place look nothing like the images of Mucovy's I just saw on Google. His ducks were mostly white and quite small. By comparison the Wiki on Muskovy's describes them as predominantly black and white with the males being quite large. Also, the image shows a lot of red on the male's face, I don't recall seeing that on the face of the drake at this guy's place.

I guess I will have to keep an eye on them via candling to determine when they go into lockdown then....

 

[ChooksChick]

Okay, I just went to google them and now I'm wondering if the eggs I have are in fact Muscovy's. To be honest, the guy I got them from had a LOT of fowl but didn't seem overly knowledgeable about what he had. For example, he had a whole pen of "black sexings" which he proudly informed me, were never exposed to other roosters because "he won't stand for mixed breeds around his place". He tried to get me to buy some of their eggs so I could hatch out some "black sexings" of my own. Also, he didn't technically give me Muscovy eggs - he gave me Muskogee eggs

Anyways....the ducks I saw at his place look nothing like the images of Mucovy's I just saw on Google. His ducks were mostly white and quite small. By comparison the Wiki on Muskovy's describes them as predominantly black and white with the males being quite large. Also, the image shows a lot of red on the male's face, I don't recall seeing that on the face of the drake at this guy's place.

I guess I will have to keep an eye on them via candling to determine when they go into lockdown then....

I saw down your way there were some Bard Ronks in the Craig's List ads, and also I saw there were a whole bunch or Rhodesian Reds!!

I know it's not nice to laugh...I'm a baaaaad maaaaaaan, as my kids would joke. They love quoting movies. The next thing out of their mouth would be, "Momma did a bad bad. You have to hold the 'bad person' water bottle now." Somehow they decided that if one is overly gleeful in someone else's misfortune, or if one makes fun of another, you have to carry around a water bottle that has BAD PERSON written on it in Sharpee. They think they're awesome because they make family members accountable for Schadenfreude!!

I love my goofy teens!

 

[yinepu]

Okay, I just went to google them and now I'm wondering if the eggs I have are in fact Muscovy's. To be honest, the guy I got them from had a LOT of fowl but didn't seem overly knowledgeable about what he had. For example, he had a whole pen of "black sexings" which he proudly informed me, were never exposed to other roosters because "he won't stand for mixed breeds around his place". He tried to get me to buy some of their eggs so I could hatch out some "black sexings" of my own. Also, he didn't technically give me Muscovy eggs - he gave me Muskogee eggs

Anyways....the ducks I saw at his place look nothing like the images of Mucovy's I just saw on Google. His ducks were mostly white and quite small. By comparison the Wiki on Muskovy's describes them as predominantly black and white with the males being quite large. Also, the image shows a lot of red on the male's face, I don't recall seeing that on the face of the drake at this guy's place.

I guess I will have to keep an eye on them via candling to determine when they go into lockdown then....

Muscovys can come in all sorts of colors.. no idea though about "Muskogees"... lol
there is a strain of pure white muscovys.. but they are fairly large.. unless all he had was a bunch of young females.. in which case the eggs wouldn't be fertile if there were no males running around... mine are pretty big though.. I guess they are about the size of a full grown turkey hen (shorter though) so they are larger than my cayugas and mallards

 

[HEChicken]

After reading more about them on the breeds section, the hissing fits with them being muscovy's, so I guess I'll just wait and see. He had one female sitting on a clutch and seemed to think the two out grazing were a pair, but now I'm wondering if all three aren't hens and that poor hen is sitting brooding for nothing. I guess I'll find out in a few days when I candle. Its all an adventure, huh?

 

[HEChicken]

I saw down your way there were some Bard Ronks in the Craig's List ads, and also I saw there were a whole bunch or Rhodesian Reds!!

I know it's not nice to laugh...I'm a baaaaad maaaaaaan, as my kids would joke. They love quoting movies. The next thing out of their mouth would be, "Momma did a bad bad. You have to hold the 'bad person' water bottle now." Somehow they decided that if one is overly gleeful in someone else's misfortune, or if one makes fun of another, you have to carry around a water bottle that has BAD PERSON written on it in Sharpee. They think they're awesome because they make family members accountable for Schadenfreude!!

I love my goofy teens!

Your kids sound like a hoot - so great that you are able to enjoy them so much!

 

[Pele]

I candled again today, and I think the temp fluctuations for one day killed most of my batch.

Only two eggs have noticeably progressed, and the rest seem exactly the same as the first time I candled. I have the slim hope that I'm a neruotic worrier who is seeing things that arn't there to fuss over.... but I might be right this time. Boo.