Help! Duck beak and foot poking out. No progress in 12+ hours

[Oklahomaduckie]

Hello! Essentially as the title says.. duckling pipped yesterday, and made its beak out through a dime size hole or so and I can see his foot pressed up against his face. I know the already hatched ducklings helped open the hole he's poked through. He's not as active as he was last night- I thought for sure he'd be out today but no progress. He's positioned on the fatter end of the egg. Humidity is about 80%. It is a smaller egg as far as ducks go, not sure if that makes a difference or not. Should I help? Wait? Wait and then help? Thank you!

 

[sourland]

What day is the egg on? If close to 28, I would gradually start assisting. Stopping immediately if blood appears.

 

[Oklahomaduckie]

What day is the egg on? If close to 28, I would gradually start assisting. Stopping immediately if blood appears.

It's day 26.5. Had an early hatcher day before last, four more yesterday. The poor lad with his head and foot stuck out opens his mouth a lot, not sure if that's a sign of anything.

 

[sourland]

Given that others have hatched already, I would gradually start assisting - stopping at the first sign of bleeding.

 

[sourland]

How did the duckling/you make out?

 

[Oklahomaduckie]

How did the duckling/you make out?

It was definitely a first for me. (Most of my experience is with chicks, this is only my second duck hatch and it's been a couple years.)

I did get the duckling out, and he's doing well! When I removed the egg from the incubator, his head was stuck to a neighboring egg out of my view. Like glued to it. Never had that happen! So I freed him of that egg, and began carefully peeling the shell away. Absolutely no blood, I think he was ready to be out for a while at that point. It was like peeling a completely dry shell away from dry crusty bird- honestly it was kind of gross and a bit smelly because it was just dry membrane. The poor guy looked like he'd been dipped in glue and set out to dry.

I had immediately upon freeing him put him back in the incubator to dry off, and honestly to see if he'd perk up or even survive. He spent some time in the curled up position he'd been in while stuck in the egg, then flopped around a bit... but after a couple hours he started to stand and look like he might actually have a chance. At that point it was really obvious he wasn't going to fluff up- the dry membrane was just glued to him head to legs. So I got a bowl of warm water and let him soak off some of the membrane- which helped about 50%. He needs another soak, which I'll do tonight. After he spent the night in the incubator alone, I put him with the other ducklings and he's eating and drinking just fine.

I've had chicks get shrink wrapped before, and it looked a bit different. You know, like they have that inner membrane be shrunk to their bodies inside the egg. I've never seen a membrane so dry and stuck to a bird, it was a bit bizarre.

I think a couple of things happened. It's a new incubator to me, and while I had two thermometers I believe the temperature must have been .5-1 degree too warm, because the hatch started when the egg turned was still in- day 23.5 and a day and a half before lockdown. I heard a duckling peeping, looked inside and lo and behold there he was trapped on the side of the turner. So I had to quickly remove the eggs and the turner and bump up the humidity. Several had pipped already, so I suspect I unfortunately shrink wrapped the majority of my hatch.

To add insult to injury, the humidity was low when they started to pip. It got down to the mid 30s, which I had looked at the day before and said to myself, "I'm about to put these on lockdown, so I'll bump it way up tomorrow when I remove the egg turner". Which would have been fine, had they not started to pip early. I dry hatch chicks, so for me that's pretty common practice to let it get low- but in the future I'll start bumping humidity the last week of a hatch so this doesn't happen again. Live and learn, unfortunately.

I only have seven ducklings out of 24 developed eggs, which is an awful hatch rate but I'm happy to have these seven! And happy for my little fighter, as crusty as the poor guy is. I still have the remaining eggs in the incubator just in case, but I'm betting it's just these guys that'll hatch.

 

[sourland]

Good update - well done.