Good old Call Duck thread

[StormsnSaugeye]

When they're all finally ready to come out, you will. So what I reckon is that they're the slow to hatch type. 48 hours after internal pip and they finally poke a hole out, which means I expect them to take an additional 24 hours to hatch. That's just a ball park though. The slowness perplexes me as every other time I've ever tried incubating eggs, I saw 24 hours between internal pip and hatching.
So the slowness is a new one.

 

[WVduckchick]

Chickens are much quicker than ducks. Ducks are slow. Mallard-derived ducks are even slower than Call ducks. I think ducks just need air sooner than chicks, to do the final yolk and blood vessel absorption.

We get lots of folks here that jump the gun assisting ducks, especially if they have hatched chickens before.

 

[StormsnSaugeye]

Well, I admit I jumped the gun just a touch. 48 hours between internal and external pip is weird as hell. Even a goose I once raised never took that long for me. 24 hours became my baseline at some point.
Luckily no harm done and my patience certainly has helped keep me from taking it irreparably far.

 

[WVduckchick]

View attachment 1472235

As someone who takes photographs these are shameful, but I snapped them off in a hot minute. All the eggs show this similar veining (I think they are internally detached from the chorio-allantoic membrane) not so much that you can see the interior and around the yolk sac. So my misinterpretation there.
The presence of these big old red veins to me is like a danger sign.

Had to go back and look at this pic on a bigger screen. I'm not sure exactly what are of the egg we are looking at. But there will be some residual blood vessels that may remain in the egg after hatching. Probably not as big as what I think I'm seeing, but stringy little things like spider web threads are not uncommon.

 

[StormsnSaugeye]

Had to go back and look at this pic on a bigger screen. I'm not sure exactly what are of the egg we are looking at. But there will be some residual blood vessels that may remain in the egg after hatching. Probably not as big as what I think I'm seeing, but stringy little things like spider web threads are not uncommon.

Yeah those are blood vessels that lay between the chick and the egg shell itself. Near as I can tell, it is a main vein that helps with the respiratory functions of the chick itself during development. What I imagine happens is that during the internal pipping stage, there is a slower hand off to the functions of the lung than what I've seen so far, so that the veins act as a scaffolding structure during respiratory initiation. That is, if we were to plot out the precise sequence of blood vessel shut down, it would go from these veins first shutting down, to the veins that are not directly tied to the yolk, then the yolk being drawn in to the shut down of the remaining external veins.
As of right now we are about 48 hours into that process. A process I expected would only take 24 hours to be frank...

I find this very fascinating to be honest.

 

[WVduckchick]

Yeah those are blood vessels that lay between the chick and the egg shell itself. Near as I can tell, it is a main vein that helps with the respiratory functions of the chick itself during development. What I imagine happens is that during the internal pipping stage, there is a slower hand off to the functions of the lung than what I've seen so far, so that the veins act as a scaffolding structure during respiratory initiation. That is, if we were to plot out the precise sequence of blood vessel shut down, it would go from these veins first shutting down, to the veins that are not directly tied to the yolk, then the yolk being drawn in to the shut down of the remaining external veins.
As of right now we are about 48 hours into that process. A process I expected would only take 24 hours to be frank...

I find this very fascinating to be honest.

I agree, totally fascinating!

 

[StormsnSaugeye]

Update. One tried to get out, but didn't seem very eager to complete the process. His little eyes are still closed and even though I couldn't see the yolk when I shined my flashlight down the egg, I decided to play it safe and let him sit in a tea cup still in his egg for a while. There's still a preponderance of red veins even though they're not as extensive as before.

I'm jokingly calling it the tea earl grey punishment for now.

 

[WVduckchick]

Update. One tried to get out, but didn't seem very eager to complete the process. His little eyes are still closed and even though I couldn't see the yolk when I shined my flashlight down the egg, I decided to play it safe and let him sit in a tea cup still in his egg for a while. There's still a preponderance of red veins even though they're not as extensive as before.

I'm jokingly calling it the tea earl grey punishment for now.

Awesome. I say they are in ICU when I have to make them stay in the cup, but earl grey is perfect for a call duck lol!
I have a dusky grey juvenile, 99% sure its a drake (holding out 1% hope of still being female lol) I think we just named him Earl.

 

[StormsnSaugeye]

Awesome. I say they are in ICU when I have to make them stay in the cup, but earl grey is perfect for a call duck lol!
I have a dusky grey juvenile, 99% sure its a drake (holding out 1% hope of still being female lol) I think we just named him Earl.

Speaking of sexing. Is it really 8 months to know what sex it is?
Problem I'm already seeing is that I'll likely have 2 white call ducks. White always seem to have an orange bill, so what technique is best used to sex them?

 

[MontanaChickDoc]

I'll be checking back in a bit for more updates! My little call hen is sitting on 5. My last hen (different one) had a disastrous hatch. 3 dead in shell, one of which had a malformed beak, one hatched also with a malformed beak (never ate, died on day 3)...but I have hatched 5 from this hen (in an incubator) and they were perfect so I am hoping for good things from letting her set them.