I haven't been in here in a while, but please explain how you incubated the eggs, humidity, turning, temperatures, incubator, anything pertaining to your incubation. If you've already posted this, please tell me where and I'll be glad to go read it. I am by-no-means a qualified expert, but you can read my initial hatching progress at the beginning of this post. And have hatched a few since.
I have an idea of what could well be wrong, but I need to hear how you incubated them before I give my opinion.
Bob
Hello Bob,
Goodness! Where to start? I really created a mess, doing everything wrong right from the beginning!
I was hoping that my Muscovy would sit...and since I was not well educated on this, at the end of the day on the day she laid her first egg, I took it out of the nest box and put it in the incubator...I did that, DAILY, with eggs 1-15 as they were laid. Good, huh?
The humidity was low - hard to maintain at a constant %, but it was generally around 40-50%. Sometimes lower, very rarely higher. The temperature was pretty consistent at 99.5, in a still-air incubator. I turned only once a day - I think I read that some where here.
As Zippy continued laying, I understood that I was supposed to set all the eggs at once, not one at a time. So I started leaving the eggs in the nest. I left A-I in Zippy's nest, and she never sat - not even three days after she laid "I." So I collected them all and put them in the incubator.
As potential hatch day got closer, I came here and asked for help...Lori (Lacrystol) suggested I get a second incubator and separate the eggs - I needed a lockdown incubator. So I did. We raied the humidity and stopped trurning. I continued to have trouble maintaining a consistent humidity - and somewhere along the line, it spiked to in the 80% range, and we had trouble with sticky eggs.
4-11 have now hatched, and of the 8, 4 have survived.
Not sure this is enough information for you...what more can I tell you?
Thank you, Bob.
Michelle
