Hatching eggs

[Dkugler]

I've only had male ducks before this, so I'm new to eggs and such. My female has been laying an egg a day for the past 6 days. My husband does not want all of them to hatch, but has decided that 1 or 2 eggs hatching would be ok. I've been taking the eggs away from her and storing them on my kitchen counter, and this morning there's another egg in her pen. We don't have a nesting box for her yet so she just layed it next to the bushes we have in there. It's raining today and will be for the next week (we're in Fl) do I need to go get the egg out of the pen and try and incubate it somehow? Or just let nature take it's course and go with the flow? I have a 4yo son who is super excited to have ducklings ,so if possible, I don't want to mess this up. Thanks in advance!

 

[Ladybird CA]

in my experience with chickens if you take away the eggs they won't hatch them, but I'm not too sure about ducks. You might need to put some fake eggs or infertile eggs with the 1 or 2 fertile eggs. Then when she starts incubating it throw out the infertile eggs after a few days so they don't get rotten, unless they are fake you can probably leave them there in case she abandons the nest. I was thinking 2 eggs ofcourse but if he is adamant about just 2 eggs then maybe you can have 1 now and 1 the next time she goes broody.

 

[Dkugler]

in my experience with chickens if you take away the eggs they won't hatch them, but I'm not too sure about ducks. You might need to put some fake eggs or infertile eggs with the 1 or 2 fertile eggs. Then when she starts incubating it throw out the infertile eggs after a few days so they don't get rotten, unless they are fake you can probably leave them there in case she abandons the nest. I was thinking 2 eggs ofcourse but if he is adamant about just 2 eggs then maybe you can have 1 now and 1 the next time she goes broody.

Thank you very much! Unfortunately , yes, he is adament about only 1 or 2 hatching, but I didnt even think about putting the ones on my counter back in with her so that she'd incubate them. I did move the one egg in her pen out of the rain and into their hut so it'd stay out of the rain and dry, but it kind of makes me worried that we dont have a nesting box for her yet and it's just laying there on the sand.

 

[Ladybird CA]

well you may have to give her infertile chicken eggs or something so that you don't have to throw out poor duck embryos unless you don't have a problem doing that I'm just a softy so I would haha

 

[Ladybird CA]

I did have a chicken that sat on only one egg til it hatched, but it was sold to me along with the egg and I'm not sure if it had more eggs before that

 

[Ladybird CA]

oh and usually the duck makes a nest out of her feathers unless she is the type that doesn't nest

 

[Dkugler]

oh and usually the duck makes a nest out of her feathers unless she is the type that doesn't nest

I think she's going to be the type that doesn't nest. This is her first time laying, she just turned 1 a few weeks ago, and seems to just drop them wherever

 

[Ladybird CA]

you would need to incubate it then, but itd be expensive to buy an incubator for one egg. There might be someone advertising to hatch eggs on craigslist, they usually charge about a dollar for the egg to go in and another dollar for the duckling

 

[Ladybird CA]

if the ducks are muscovies the hatcher would need to incubate for 35 days, other breeds 28

 

[Dkugler]

if the ducks are muscovies the hatcher would need to incubate for 35 days, other breeds 28

Yes, they're Pekins so it's 28 days for them. I'm hoping omce we get a nesting box things will change