Humidity and hatching ducks

[debilorrah]

I am looking to see if anyone has had the same experience I have had. For a long time now, I have had failed hatches of ducks. I was keeping my humidity higher, 65% days 1-18 and 75% upon lockdown. Like a good girl, following the rules.

Here is the thing: My first duck hatch went well and I kept the humidity low. This hatch, I had ducks and chickens in the bator at the same time, so I kept the humidity low again. I locked down 5 eggs and 3 have pipped and 1 is rocking. The 5th one peeped at me last night so I know it is alive - they are due to hatch tomorrow.

So. Upping the humidity did NOT work for me!!! Has anyone else experienced this? I don't want to start giving advise to people having a hard time hatching ducks if I am the only one experiencing this.

ETA: The time it took me to post this the rocker pipped.

 

[4-H chicken mom]

I do 55% for days 1-24, 99.5 degrees then move them to the hatcher and lower the temp to 98.5 and raise the humidity to 70-75%. I do 24 days because my BEI's always seem to hatch a day early. If I were you I would go back to what works best for you. Congrats and your pipped. Good luck.

 

[heathersboers]

I hatch ducks just like chicks...I use my styrofoams for ducks.keep humidity about 35-45 and mist everyday. At lockdown I up to 65%. And mist.....so far so good. 100% hatch on this last batch from 92caddy...woooohooo!!!

 

[debilorrah]

Quote:
I am really curious to see how many people treat them like chicken eggs. That is the only way I can get them to hatch. I didn't mist these either. The first round of chickens hatched last Thursday and I set more in there on Saturday. Go figure.

 

[Gypsy07]

Quote:
What rules are those? By my understanding of it, duck eggs' requirement for higher humidity is ONLY during lockdown and hatching and NOT for the whole duration of the incubation. By keeping it high throughout, you're probably not letting them lose enough moisture.

I'm not going to quote specific humidity figures at you, cause as with chicken eggs, your ideal humidity will depend on your local weather, your type of bator, your eggs, etc etc, but comparing ideal moisture loss figures are interesting. The ideal moisture loss by weight for chicken eggs is 11-15% by lockdown. For waterfowl eggs it is slightly higher, at 15-16%. So if the eggshells of chickens and ducks are of similar porosity, duck eggs might actually require LESS humidity days 1-18 in order to achieve the correct amount of moisture loss.

Of course, you can still go on to bump it up as high as you like for lockdown.

If I were you, I'd weigh my duck eggs to determine their ideal humidity.

 

[llaaadyel]

For my duck egg hatches I have used 65% humidity during incubation and 80% during lockdown and hatch.

 

[SundownWaterfowl]

I do dry incubation for the duck eggs. Occasionally spritzing them down with water and cooling them. Humidity stays around 18-20%. When I move them to a different incubator to hatch, I bump it up to around 70%.

 

[llaaadyel]

I have read a lot about dry incubation and great results. I am dying to try it out. It seems a lot easier than worrying about the water for the whole incubation period.