Incubating shipped duck eggs questions!!!

[K.Riggs]

None of them float around just irregular shaped and jiggly, bits of them membrane separated from the shell i guess.

 

[Pyxis]

Okay, you're probably fine then! That's not so bad, and they will likely do fine in the auto turner. Just be sure your humidity is well monitored so they have correct growth. In fact, it might not be a bad idea to weigh them to monitor the moisture loss, especially since this is your first time and humidity really varies a lot from area to area as far as what's needed.

 

[K.Riggs]

Humidity in my incubator is stable at 40 until lock down then 65 it just has two basins, you fill one then the other at lockdown. There is no way to change humidity it's supposedly calibrated and rigorously tested so the company says
I think humidity in my area is in the 30's lately in my house. I know nothing about weighing, is there a resource you can point me to on this? Also do you think it's really bad i cleaned them?

 

[Pyxis]

Nah, cleaning them is probably not going to hurt anything

For weighing, you weigh each egg before you set the eggs on day one, that's your base weight. From there, you calculate what 15% of that would be. So say an egg is 100 grams, that would be 15 grams. 15 grams is how much weight you want it to lose over the incubation period, so that would be 3.75 grams a week. So on the 7th, 14th and 21st days you weigh it to make sure that's what it's losing. Weigh again on the 25th day (lockdown day) to get confirmation that it's lost enough weight.

If it's losing too much weight, that means it's losing too much moisture, and humidity needs to be increased. If it's not losing enough weight, that means humidity is too high and needs to be decreased.

 

[K.Riggs]

Ok but they have been in the bator for 10 hrs which was 24 hrs after they arrived and were resting. I plan on turning on the turning function at 10 am in the morning which will be 48 hrs of resting. I'm guessing it is too late to disturb them and weigh them now? Also since i can't adjust my humidity anyhow should i even worry about it? Or could i run it dry if i had to or put in a wet cloth or whatever? Would you take them out and weigh them? My bator stabilises temp after five minutes max if that means anything. I reeeallly want at least two ducklings out of these 11 eggs. I care a great deal about having this breed and it is so hard for me to get the eggs!

 

[Pyxis]

You can still weigh them. Maybe only weigh a couple eggs and just use those as a guide for all of them, that way you don't have to disturb them all.

You could adjust humidity, you'd just have to get creative, such as adding a baby food jar of water or something