HELP CRUSHED EGG

[rehabber0909]

I have a first time mama who stepped on her ready to hatch egg. I can see the duckling breathing and the membrane appears to be intact. I just put it in my still air incubator with heat at 102 and 42% humidity. What should I do next? It's my first time too so I. Need all the help I can get. Asap!

 

[Pyxis]

Can you post a picture? You'll want to get that humidity up since the membrane is exposed, get it right up to 65 or 70 percent.

 

[rehabber0909]

Can you post a picture? You'll want to get that humidity up since the membrane is exposed, get it right up to 65 or 70 percent.

 

[rehabber0909]

I have a damp paper towel placed lightly over it to help with humidity

 

[Pyxis]

I have a damp paper towel placed lightly over it to help with humidity

I wouldn't put the paper towel directly over it, I'd just try to get the ambient humidity up. The paper towel being right on the egg might chill it.

 

[rehabber0909]

I see a bit of feather? So maybe there is a small tear in the membrane, but it doesn't appear very big at all.

 

[rehabber0909]

It's kind of around it not on it. I added more water too. That isn't a feather it's marker. My eyes are blurry from staring lol

 

[Pyxis]

I see a bit of feather? So maybe there is a small tear in the membrane, but it doesn't appear very big at all.

I'm not seeing that in the picture, but as long as there's no bleeding that's good. Edit: Yep I see it's marker lol. Since the shell is so broken you're probably going to be in for an assisted hatch since the duckling won't really be able to get traction to turn and zip. What day is the egg on?

 

[RooRidgeFarm]

Hi rehaber,
I gave you all the advice on my intervention thread-take a look.

You definitely need to intervene, and soon. Hopefully the nostrils are already free of a little membrane. Work higher towards where the head or beak would be.

Take DULL tweezers and very carefully slowly pinch away some of the shell near the head area so you can see what you're dealing with. Work slow and just put the bottom side of tweezer right under the shell surface- don't include the membrane when you pinch down on shell piece. The reason you pinch shell pieces off is because of you pick or pull, you'll definitely end up yanking on membrane and cause bleeding.
One you remove some shell, look at my advice on the intervention thread.

And lower your temp from 102 degrees to 99 degrees even. Waterfowl are to be hatched at a slightly lower temp than incubation. And 102 will dry things way too fast.

 

[Pyxis]

Hi rehaber,
I gave you all the advice on my intervention thread-take a look.

You definitely need to intervene, and soon. Since you see a feather, start looking around that spot to start helping. Hopefully the nostrils are already free of a little membrane.

Take DULL tweezers and very carefully slowly pinch away some of the shell near the head area so you can see what you're dealing with. Work slow and just put the bottom side of tweezer right under the shell surface- don't include the membrane when you pinch down on shell piece. The reason you pinch shell pieces off is because of you pick or pull, you'll definitely end up yanking on membrane and cause bleeding.
One you remove some shell, look at my advice on the intervention thread.

And lower your temp from 102 degrees to 99 degrees even. Waterfowl are to be hatched at a slightly lower temp than incubation. And 102 will dry things way too fast.

It's not a feather, it's marker. And without knowing what day it was on, we should not be advising her to go ahead and start opening it up without that knowledge, especially since it didn't even externally pip yet as far as the OP has said. In fact, we don't even know if it's internally pipped. And ducklings take a long time to hatch from external pip to zip, during which time they still are absorbing yolk and blood. Opening up the egg too soon can easily cause the duckling to bleed out and die.

Not trying to sound rude, but there are a lot of things we should find out here before we rush to tell the OP to just start opening this egg up.