having terrible luck with duck eggs!!! anyone w/ experience plz help!

[sunket77]

I am having the most horrible luck with duck eggs!!!

we started out with 5 (call ducks) and now down to one and it didn't look right after candling today. The 3 left in the bator 2 are cloudy-clear with no veins. The one I thought was doing well seems to have sprung a leak in a vein or something there is what looks like a lot of red blood clouding around the embryo. I am not tossing it ..not yet. It is in the bator with chicken eggs. I was attempting a "dry hatch" like I have read other people do on here. I am not seeing a large air sack or anything. Maybe it's to dry here to try that?? (central texas) I want to set some more but now I am afraid. I have to figure out whats going wrong first! but I only have another day or so to set the eggs I have collected. We have so looked forward to hatching out some baby ducks!

I am on day 14 with an LG still air incubator w/turner and running temp steady at 102

 

[Chris09]

You humidity might be off....

Humidity--
Incubation Period - 86% (Wet Bulb)
Hatching Period - 94% (Wet Bulb)
Or 50 to 65% Relative humidity

Chris

 

[sunket77]

that is probably what it is ... I was afraid to run the humidity to high with the chicken eggs in there also. I wish I had a small bator for my duck eggs since I only have about 5 or 6 at a time. But I only have the one lg so I am going to keep trying!

 

[RedfogsFlock]

Quote:
We're doing chicken and duck together, and so far so good.

Now we run 99.5 temp, and 50% humidity. Tomorrow we go into lockdown for some of the eggs. We have a homemade turner that we made for the other eggs so we don't have to open the bator to turn once we locked. (got the turner plan from another member on here)

So back to what I was saying, we started with 7 chicken eggs, and 3 runner duck eggs. Two of our chicken eggs were not fertile,(afterall our roo is only 5 months old) and all the rest of the eggs are right on schedule!

Our first hatch we ran our humidity at 60% for the ducks alone, and raised it to 80% on lockdown. We ran a temp of 99.5 for them, and 97.0 on lockdown. We had a 100% hatch rate!

We are currently doing a mixed hatch of chicken and duck, and it's our first time doing this new way. Usually people will set eggs so everyone hatches on the same day. We're doing it so our chickens hatch on Saturday, and then the ducks will hatch the following Sunday. If it works we'll let ya know!