How long til I should do a float test?

[kellyatric]

Hi, my little duck eggs have been sat in the bator now for 29 days, I candled them before putting them on lockdown and everything looked ok (not sure about one of them) but there has been no sign any movement or peep and I thought surely there would have been something by now?

How long should I wait before trying the float test I have read about and what is it I need to look out for when trying it?

P.s. this is my first hatch and would have loved to have at least one hatch

 

[jfulcher]

Quote:
Can you candle??? If not by morning you can do the float test but I would candle for movement. 28 days is hatching time, but you could have miscalculated the dates. ALSO depending on what breed it is it could be 34 days... Soo... Pekin 28 days, Muscovy 32-34. Idk about any others.... I am only doing pekin myself first timer...

for both of us!

 

[Flawedatdesign]

Keep in mind the time frame established is just a guide. The 21 days for chicks the 28 days for ducks is what it should be in a perfect world.

Sometimes the lil ones in the eggs don't get the memo. I give mine 2 days past the due date then do a float test.

 

[kellyatric]

Quote:
What should I be looking out for when doing a float test i.e. should they sink/float etc. Thanks.

 

[Gypsy07]

Bear in mind that unless you actually see an egg rocking and rolling in the water, all the float test will be able to tell you is the amount of moisture that the egg lost during incubation. Viable looking eggs should just barely float, with only a small amount of the egg above the surface of the water. If they sink, they most likely never developed at all, or they were over humidified so much that they died. If they float high out of the water they might be rotten, or they might have been under humidified so much that they dried out and died.

If an eggs floats correctly but doesn't move, it might be fully developed but dead, or it might be alive and perfectly healthy, but just not quite ready to start hatching yet. Recently I had overdue eggs under a broody. I float tested them on day 24 and saw two wiggling, and two more that were floating correctly but not moving at all. I dried off the wiggling two and put them back under my hen, and I was just getting ready to throw the other two away, when I saw a tiny faint twitch from one of them. At this point it had been floating in the water for about 10 minutes, and I really thought it must have been dead. I warmed it up and dried it off and rushed it back under my hen, and it went on to hatch a day behind the other two, on day 25 or 26 I think. I'm not sure why they were so late, but they all turned out perfectly healthy...