How eggsciting! Call ducks feeling hatchy! *PICS!* MORE!

[duckluck]

Okay, the busy little "wigglers", about 10-11 of them, are now in the hatcher on today, day 24. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

This time I am not going to be "asleep at the wheel", so to speak...if I don't see some sort of action by tomorrow, the drill is coming out. Not going to just sit here while they die again.

 

[bemba]

Oh they're gonna be so cute..... can't wait to see them..... how exciting

 

[duckluck]

Let's hope, but I'm not going to count the duckies till they're hatched.

I know calls are much prone to being disappointment-getters when it comes to hatching. Luckily at this time in my life I have the time to be paying this much attention to what is going on here. This is not usually the case.

 

[bemba]

So what colours are you expecting? Do you have pieds? Natural pied is my favourite colour, Although all the colours are nice in thier own way! Good luck and talk soon

 

[duckluck]

I have whites, grays and self-blacks, though I suspect many of these will be whites if they hatch, my whites are the most vigorous and amorous.

I did take the tool to the shell of the internal pip I got last night; made a small hole to get him breathing. No progress by this morning...I removed a bit more shell and peeled a bit of membrane but got some blood, so I swabbed the membrane with water and let him alone. Tonight at 7pm he is still breathing and moving with his bill out of the shell, but no more progress other than moving the egg around a bit from his wiggling. A call duck guy I talk to said he may be resting so give him some more time and let him be till tomorrow to be sure he takes up all his yolk...tonight at 10pm we are going into day 25. I'm kind of leaving things be for the moment with the others so as not to traumatize him...I have several other wigglers and I have heard several peeps, so I hope I am doing the right thing by them. I am really going to kick myself if they die in the shell again from letting them be. This guy with the nickel sized hole in his shell appears to be a white, and if he makes it I already have a name picked out for him...or her, as the case may be. Humidity is sitting at a pretty solid 68% and the consensus seems to be that it should work fine and not to go higher...this hatcher gets condensation after 70%, so I'm leaving a couple of tics for error so we don't drown.

I sure hope this guy makes it...he has yawned his cute little beak a few times and I really want him to make it! Been agonizing about this all day! The hardest part about any of these animals is getting through the school of hard knocks, whatever it might be, when you just want so much to *know* and be able to do! I looked at my adult ducks tonight and said to myself, I hope I'm not failing these guys here...my fertility rate at present is about 66% so they are doing their part as much as they can, too cold to go to the breeding pens just yet, though we are getting more ready day by day for that. I think I might allow (maybe coax!) at least one hen to go broody and see what happens, depending upon how things go here. I'd like to compare notes between the two methods anyway. I have two broody candidates I think might work, both from my whites.

 

[bemba]

You know that I have had to help some of my ducklings out before (on several occasions) and I know how nerve wracking it is when you peel a bit of shell away and there is blood, and you just think poop. I have found if the ducklings have a big enough hole to breathe they survive as long as they dont dry out too much. But once that hole is made they can't progress piping because they haven't the shell to push their way round to pip the rest of the egg. So what I have done is got a torch to shine through the hole (best you can) to see if blood vessels are still present And if there are none close to the hole I gentle peel back a bit more shell. But when they are really ready to come out you wont have any blood when you peel bits off. Once I have enough shell off and they are ready, I just gently pull the head out and lay it on its side..... then when ready it will just kick free. Fingers crossed for you.....

 

[duckluck]

Okay, he is out! A lot of problems...he got sticky and he still has a tiny bit of yolk left, still stuck to his shell, but my friend who has done a lot of eggs came over and said it was time, so she pulled him. He is rather weak right now so we are letting him rest for tonight and going to try and get the shell off tomorrow.

Duckling #2...yes, there is a number two! A quick sweep of my candler this morning showed a second guy had pipped his membrane but was struggling against the shell...and I do mean struggling! I picked up the egg and could feel him banging around in there! So I cracked a little hole and he has shoved his bill by it a few times today, breathing and still looking vigorous. Judging by #1 and number #3 (explain #3 in a moment), we have decided to give him a day, maybe two, in his present condition to see if he hatches himself or if not, we'll hatch him, but we feel he needs more time to absorb his yolk based on the other two.

#3 did not fare so well...#3 was a breech, struggling against the membrane with his rear end when I popped the shell. Already had some blood on its own and a drying membrane when I popped it. Friend came over and said, yep, breech, so we opened it to find there was nothing we could do...duckling had "scrambled egg" and bad yolk absorption going on, this one was a goner.

Too bad because it looked to be a beautiful white duckling! I knew I was going to have to learn from some mistakes and some hard knocks, but today was definitely hard. The other eggs look to be MIA, for want of a better word...all embryo movement looks to have ceased, no other pips on the other 8.

In other news, the 14 I have in the one bator are two weeks old and look to be more vigorous than any I have had so far, so I am hoping this bodes well for hatching. This group is being turned by hand 3x daily and started being misted about day 4-5 after cooldown at night. Group on next shelf has been set for 4 days now and will be candled Thursday. I am eager to see if the much-touted hand-turning method will yield better results or if we really have to go back to the drawing board here. It's hard having to learn this way, but at least I can say I gave it the good old college try here.

 

[duckluck]

Quote:
Any more to tell on this, please, by all means take the discussion floor...you never know when it could come in handy in the middle of the night!

The hole I have for #2 is a teeny hole, just enough to breathe and see his bill a bit. I swabbed it with water to help keep it moist in the hope that he will not get sticky and will try on his own. The other stuff you said, I pretty much ad-libbed on my own so I am glad to see that is what someone else uses successfully, I'm not second-guessing it so much now.

 

[IwannaBEaMERMAID]

WHERE ARE THE PICS !!!

 

[duckluck]

Well, #1 is resting tonight, he distinctively asked "no pictures, please" when he was pulled from the shell. He is having a bad hair day, you see.

Hopefully he will be more up to greeting his public tomorrow, as long as he makes it through the night and gets his stickies washed off completely. We wanted him to take up the bit of yolk left and hopefully we can work on his first warm shower tomorrow. He did give a struggle toward getting up just a bit ago when I was in turning eggs in the other machine so that is a good sign.