Is this ok?

[rocketbunni]

Hi all, I have a Rcom mini (3 egg) inci and 10 days ago i set my third attempt at BEI ducklings, I was sent 4 eggs but set just three and set one aside, I candled yesterday and can see only one egg is viable, so i switched the spare egg in...I'm prepared to turn it manually during hatch faze...my only concern is humidity? do you think it will cope with a couple of days higher humidity? of course once the first duckling fluffs up I will reset the inci to normal....any thoughts?

 

[mandelyn]

Do you mean sent as in shipped through the mail? The shipping process can reduce the odds of a good hatch quite a bit sometimes. I got 1 Saxony duckling out of 2 tries, of 8 total eggs. 3 total made it to the end, just the one actually hatched. In the first hatch I had local eggs, every one of those hatched without issue, so it wasn't the incubation that time.

How old is the spare egg? They only last for about 5-7 days, sometimes 10, depending on storage. When working with a small batch or shipped eggs, set everything you can. The eggs rarely do what you want them to. If you want 3 ducklings, specially working with shipped eggs, you may want to set a dozen. If there are extra, you can find homes for them.

In May I broke down and bought live ducklings and had them shipped. I ordered 10 and received 10 perfect little ducklings. So different than ordering 6 eggs and getting 1 duckling, or 24 chicken eggs and getting 3 chickens... I've had bad luck with shipped eggs.

Maybe look around for a larger incubator so that you can set more at a time? Staggering is workable. My first duck hatch was staggered badly... 1 egg here, 1 egg 2 days later... hatching went on for a week and a half. Or see if you can find babies in what you want.

 

[rocketbunni]

Yes shipped eggs...i really dont like them being shipped either but the BEI's are so hard to come by here in the uk, I should have bought a bigger incubator in the beggining, but once I have my ducks I'm probably done hatching

....I would get day olds shipped but Its not allowed in the uk either..

Fingers crossed the late egg will develop..it was probably 10 days old..i've read duck eggs last longer and in fact my last attempt was with 2-3 week old eggs and one duckling did make it to pipping but was a wrong end hatcher and didnt make it