First duck hatch :)

[nomirawr1]

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1019004388284077&id=898823030302214

We're hatching our first duck eggs! Pekins even!

Its going to be a looooong 28 days!
Usually we hatch quail, which often hatch 15-16 days.... so this is gonna be torture

Question:
Some guy on youtube reckons to cool the eggs daily from day 10 to 25...
But anyone can make awful YT videos, so in the interests of not screwing up this hatch, is this a thing I need to do? Or not?

Anything else different from chicken eggs besides the length of time?

Thanks

 

[Timothy Menezes]

No you don’t need to, but it is something ducks will do. They will cover the eggs periodically to minimize heat loss and go off on a walkabout. This does not mean you need to and is not common practice among duck hatcheries.

I believe I also saw the video your talking about and he was hatching a rare breed of duck from the Netherlands called Hookbills.

John Metzer (of Metzer Farms) is my go to for all duck related information. He website is a gold mine for duck lovers. He did say something in one of his articles or videos that he is experimenting with starting his incubators at 99.5 degrees, then at about the 3 week mark slowly turning down the temp of the incubators to about 98 degrees.

The reason for this is at that point the growing ducks are generating some heat of their own. So even though the incubators are only 98 degrees, the internal temp of the egg is still 99.5 degrees. If the incubators were still at 99.5 then the internal temp is somewhat higher and could get too hot very easily.

As for Hookbills, John is working on producing these as well and mentioned they were more tricky to hatch than other breeds. It is possible that this breed benefits from this temp fluctuations as they more closely resemble a natural incubation cycle. This is not yet studied enough to know for sure yet so we will just have to wait and see. Since your doing Pekins I would just stick with more established methods that have proven reliable with them.

 

[SimplyLivinthatFarmLife]

Good luck to you! Can't wait to see the ducklings!!!