Hi there everyone. I am new to this form and new to owning ducks as well! I grew up in the city and later in life moved to a more rural town where I was finally able to own a duck. After doing a ton of research on the numerous breeds out there, we decided that we were going to start out raising call ducks. So yesterday I bought some call duck hatching eggs from ebay and should be expecting them sometime later in the week. I want to be prepared as possible in hopes for a good hatch! I have been doing a lot of reading on incubating, but I think the best advice comes from those who have experience doing it.
We are going to be incubating our eggs in a still air incubator. It's a styrofoam one that you can get at mostly any farm store and it looks exactly like this one here:
I have multiple questions about what temperature and humidity to keep the incubator at. From what I have been reading, the temperature should be at about 101F on the top of the eggs and the humidity should be kept from 50%-55% and 70%+ the last 3 days. My one concern about using this incubator is keeping the humidity level right. I had been running it for the past few days just to get a feeling of how it's used and have found that it is very difficult to keep the humidity at a certain percentage. Especially when it is opened for the turning of the eggs (if done by hand).
Turning of the eggs should be done 3 times a day at 8 hour intervals? Is hand turning better, or should I look into picking up an automatic turner? Also, I have read on a few places that cooling the eggs increases hatching success as well?
Anyways, every bit of advice would be super helpful! As I said before, this will be my first time ever incubating duck eggs and I am both excited and a bit nervous that something will go wrong with the whole hatch.
We are going to be incubating our eggs in a still air incubator. It's a styrofoam one that you can get at mostly any farm store and it looks exactly like this one here:
I have multiple questions about what temperature and humidity to keep the incubator at. From what I have been reading, the temperature should be at about 101F on the top of the eggs and the humidity should be kept from 50%-55% and 70%+ the last 3 days. My one concern about using this incubator is keeping the humidity level right. I had been running it for the past few days just to get a feeling of how it's used and have found that it is very difficult to keep the humidity at a certain percentage. Especially when it is opened for the turning of the eggs (if done by hand).
Turning of the eggs should be done 3 times a day at 8 hour intervals? Is hand turning better, or should I look into picking up an automatic turner? Also, I have read on a few places that cooling the eggs increases hatching success as well?
Anyways, every bit of advice would be super helpful! As I said before, this will be my first time ever incubating duck eggs and I am both excited and a bit nervous that something will go wrong with the whole hatch.
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