Incubating shipped duck eggs questions!!!

[K.Riggs]

Hi, my shipped duck eggs were reeaaally dirty and i could not bear to incubate them like it. I know you are not meant to but i held damp paper towl over them to soften all the gunk then dry scotch brite and dry paper towel to buff the poo and dirt off. They are resting because the air cells are all detached i am thinking 24 hrs then 24 hrs in the incubater without the turning mechanism on?? Is there anything i should do now i cleaned them, would i be better off actually disinfecting them now?

Any advice would be appreciated. My manual with the incubator has very detailed instructions for incubation of water fowl so i will trust it. It was $600 and the supplier says very reputable italian build so i think i believe in it's reliability. I do have a seperate thermo-hydrometer inside too. Buuut the manual just says don't set shipped eggs and don't set dirty egges.. period.. These Cayuga ducks aren't available in my area so i'm risking it because i reeeeaaallly want this specific breed. One egg was broken but none got on the others. I'd be happy with a 2-3 survivors from 11 eggs. Oh and i have never done this before oh and for the record the sender (byc member who went far out of her way to find me the eggs) did an AMAZING job packing them so i think postal guys played football.

 

[Pyxis]

That's an interesting pack job, in a tube like that. That's actually probably the cause of the detached air cells - it probably rolled around A LOT and the postal workers wouldn't have had any way to tell which side is supposed to be up. Just for future reference, I would request any other eggs you get to be shipped in a box, not a tube.

Anyway, the detached air cells. You will definitely want to give them a day to rest and then when you put them in the incubator, I would set them in egg cartons. The only turning you should give them for the first several days would be to rock them from side to side in the carton, to try to get the air cells to reattach.

At a certain point, if the eggs make it that far along, the chorio-allantoic membrane will grow large enough to 'pin' the air cells back in place if they don't reattach on their own. This may take until day 10 or longer, though.

 

[K.Riggs]

Oh no it couldn't roll around it was in another outside box that made it completely secure no rolling around whatsoever.

 

[K.Riggs]

My incubator has them upright and tilts them a tiny bit continuously??

 

[Pyxis]

Okay, that makes more sense then, lol!

How far does it tip them, though? My Brinsea does the same thing and with detached air cells I'd still want to hand turn, just because of how frequently it turns them and how far the tilt is.

 

[K.Riggs]

Because they came to me within 48 hrs and i think the person gets a lot of eggs i could probably keep them resting for a few extra days if it would help??

 

[K.Riggs]

Oops upside down

 

[K.Riggs]

 

[K.Riggs]

A few look like this, are they too damaged?

 

[Pyxis]

Whoops, sorry for the slow reply, I somehow didn't see your reply here.

So that doesn't actually look detached, it just looks semi-saddled. Are the air cells loose and floating around the egg (detached) or are they just overly large and misshapen (saddled)? Because saddled air cells are much easier to hatch than detached ones, and the autoturner would likely work fine with them.