**HELP** Day 19 Duck Eggs Small Air Cells

[duckking]

We Have 1 Rouen and 2 Mallard eggs in a Brinsea Mini Advanced. Just candled them and they look great, excellent vascularization and movement, but the air cells are still small. It is very humid here and even though I have NO water in the incubator, it is maintaining 60% RH. I am wondering if this is too high and the eggs are not losing enough humidity to get good size air cells. Since we're a week away from hatch I'm pretty worried. What can I do to get the air cells larger?

Someone said to mist them, but wouldn't that make it more humid?

Someone please - any suggestions would be really appreciated!

 

[shella]

hi
i would lower the humidity until hatch duck egg need to lose a certain amount of moisture at the beginning of incubation hopefully if you lower to say 40%
it would give the eggs a chance to lose some moisture before lockdown. it also depends where you live a dry area or moist.
hope that made sense

 

[nklanza91]

Hi I have the same problem did they ever hatch???

 

[Pele]

Yes, even duck eggs need to lose a certain percentage of moisture so that the air cell is large enough to support the baby's oxygen needs while it hatches. Lower your humidity if you have enough time left to help enlarge the cell.

If you don't have enough time to lower the humidity to compensate and enlarge the cell for hatch, you can try and use a pushpin to put a tiny hole in the top (fat part) of the egg. This is an artificial pip, and lets oxygen in to compensate for the lack of oxygen available from the small air cell. Be very careful with this though, you do NOT want to break into the egg membrane, just into the air cell itself. And make sure the pin is sanitized.

Oh, and this would only be something to do at the end of lockdown, when the babies are expected to have started their internal pipping, and thus also starting the hatching process.