I just killed it!

[duck-lady]

OK so I just really wanted a rant. So every day I collect my duck eggs, except for the last two weeks two of my girls have been sitting and I have just left them to it in the top of the coop.

My other girls have continued to lay in the bottom and I have been collecting those. So today I went down and collected the eggs and checked on the two girls in the top (i check them at least twice a day) only to find a third female laying, along with the other girls, in the bare corner, where the sitting girls have nicked the straw from. So I take the eggs.

I candle them all anyway to make sure I dont take one that is being incubated and, lo and behold, we have sproglets. The third girl must have taken on the duties of the other two in sitting on eggs they couldnt quite manage. More straw in the top then.

So instead of meithering the girls again, i gently clean the eggs to set in the incubator... Not gently enough. One of the eggs detonates leaving a tiny, wriggly baby in my hands. Mortified doesnt cover it.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Not ready to hatch?

 

[Magnolia Ducks]

I'm sorry. I killed one of mine too, so I know how you feel. Just rotten.

 

[Miss Lydia]

To you both.

 

[duck-lady]

@Miss Lydia not even close. 2 weeks absolute max. Incubation time so at least 2 weeks to go.

 

[Miss Lydia]

That’s sad but it happens. And very sorry it did. We came home from Church Sunday to find one of my Muscovy’s eggs laying out side of her coop opened with a dead duckling laying there one and a half weeks to go. I have no idea how it got there.

 

[DuckyDonna]

@Miss Lydia not even close. 2 weeks absolute max. Incubation time so at least 2 weeks to go.

Ok, so it's awful but we lean from stuff like this! I've learned some awful lessons in the past 2 years too. Just when you think you've got things right and under control. Boom! You know you don't have to or it's better not to wash eggs that will be incubated right?

 

[Magnolia Ducks]

I am 13 days from hatch and was sure I had a quiter but after my last experience decided to wait a few more days. I just eggtopsied it and it looks like it made it for about seven or eight days. Fetus about an inch and a half long. Sort of a head and body but not much else. Ohh that smell. Definitely dead this time. 4 left out of 7.

 

[duck-lady]

I dont wash them if I dont have to.... But my girls are completely and right royally disgusting (completely happy l though, like pigs in, well, mud!) and these particular eggs were absolutely caked. Honestly they looked like mud rock.

 

[Timothy Menezes]

Sorry this happened, I was literally sick to my stomach when something like that happened to me.

But I am looking forward to seeing your new ducklings when they hatch!