Is there a way to help this duckling?

[Jbethlasanta]

i recently hatched about 30 eggs in 3 different batches. (They are all eggs from my 2 pekin and 1 peking drake. We've been hatching now for several months with about a 60% hatch rate.)
However the last few have had a jump in deaths, splayleg, and now this...

She also has splayleg to boot!
It looks like half her bill is missing, another one was born with a bubble on her bill.

 

[Orca5094]

Well, many ducks do just fine with bill deformities so as long as she can eat she will probably be ok.

The main concern would be figuring out why you're getting so many problems with your ducklings. Is your drake related to your females? Someone may have some bad genetics, or it could absolutely be an incubation problem. Does your temperature and humidity stay pretty constant throughout incubation? Have you checked temperature with multiple thermometers? Somewhere there is an error going on and causing these issues, so it's rather important to figure out what it is and fix it so you don't keep having these issues.

 

[Jbethlasanta]

I've been running my incubators for the last 5 months without much of a fluctuation. Temperature and humidity are pretty constant, I know this because I have a log sheet attached to each incubator where we log the temp twice a day.

as for my drake, IDK if he's related to my females as I bought two pairs of ducks and lost one male within the month, predators, and the remaining one has been fathering all my babies. my hatch rate is about 40%, but it seems that every other batch has at least one with something. I'm hatching my last batch now and then putting the incubators away for a few months, I have about 50+ ducklings now and don't know what I'm going to do with all of them.

 

[Orca5094]

Wow, that's alot of ducklings! O.O lol

Ok, well a 40% hatch rate is not very good, especially when you are getting so many with problems. Do you have multiple thermometers to confirm the temps in your incubators are correct? You really can't trust just one thermometer, even if it's one built into the incubator.

Other than that, I would just suggest getting a new drake that you know for sure is not related to your girls. Who knows, you could be breeding siblings together, which will give you alot of genetic problems. That would explain alot of your issues as well.

So, how is the duckling with the odd bill doing?