Items needed asap after hatching

[TLWR]

21 duck and 4 chicken eggs in the bator at school.

They "should" hatch on a Wednesday. The plan is to send the ones with homes on their way by that Friday.

I'm figuring on a 50% hatch rate, even though the person that gave me the eggs sees ~75% with her duck eggs.
How big a "brooder" do they need? We've got 10 days to get items from parents that I don't want to lug into school.


I have large blue storage totes. Big enough for 10-15 of these guys for a couple of days? Or should I bring in 2?
I have a light, not sure if it is ceramic though, will have to check. If not, we'll ask for one from one of the parents.
I can lend my waterer/feeder for the start.
That leaves me with bedding and something to put the waterer in so the bin isn't soaked.
Anything else?
Pine shavings ok for bedding? (I use towels for mine, but we kind of use all our towels at school and we don't really have time for an extra load of laundry each day there.)

 

[chicmom]

Pine shavings are great, and will help keep the smell down. Use two bins, otherwise one bin will get very dirty and stinky very quickly, while two bins won't.

The light is very important. If you can suspend the bulb low enough to make the area underneath around 98 degrees at first, that will be perfect. Otherwise, the chicks will get too cold and then you'll have pasty butts.

For the water, it's a good idea to set that up on a piece of wood. That way, the chicks won't immediately fill the water tray with wood shavings. (They'll still kick up the shavings and get it in their water though.)

 

[Amiga]

I would say minimum two bins. Might want a third bin on hand if the chicks and ducks don't get along.


If you can, check the temperature with moist shavings. My setup would keep the brooder at 90 before the ducklings arrived. Moisture pulled 10 degrees out of the brooder from the git go, so I added another ceramic heater.

My ducklings ate shavings, and I am allergic to them. Just a heads-up.

 

[Iain Utah]

I personally would not put infant ducklings on any bedding (such as shavings) that they could potentially eat. I also would not use anything that did not provide good traction (such as newspaper). Towels or kitchen shelf liner are both much safer. If you have a thrift store nearby, you can pick up decent sized towels for $2-3 a piece.

 

[TLWR]

The issue with towels at school is washing them. We don't have the ability to do another load of duck towels. And it can't go in with any of the other school laundry.

I can request one of the parents bring in the shelf liner - I have a small piece I could put on the request so they know what they are looking for.

 

[jgell]

I have hatched 45 ducklings, mallards and ancona, this year at school from 69 eggs. I have 42 more in the incubator with 28 due to hatch this week. We have broodered them in two totes lined with the cheapest paper towels on the market. Most have been sent to their permanent homes within 4 days but some we have kept for as long as a week and half. What we do is we feed them 3 times a day. We remove the paper towels and light and give them food and water for about 30mins. Then we take the food and water away and clean the tote and line with paper towel and put them under light. The light we adjust by the ducklings behavior, if they are loud we move the light closer if they are huddle up away from the light we move it further away. There is no reason to keep food and water available at all times. Look at what mom does in nature. They go out and eat at dusk and dawn and then spend the rest of the day out of site and keeping warm. You will able to keep them warm and dry much better if food and water is only given periodically. We are able to leave them over night with no problems. 45 ducklings this year and 15 ducklings last year and not one single duckling death. Our problem is when they hatch overnight they bang around in the incubator and kill their brothers and sisters while they are still in the egg. I working on that problem, I'm going to use one of our two hovabators strictly for hatching and I am going to partisan it off to keep newly hatched ducklings away from the unhatched eggs. Good luck with you hatch.

 

[TLWR]

Food... yeah, important.

We have 4 chicken eggs in with our hatch as well. Not sure if they will still be there at the end of the week for lockdown, but still counting on them being there.
What I can find locally is 50 pound bags of feed - purina flock raiser.

What about the chick starter sold at TSC, they have small bags of it? I'm not sure what medication is in that to know if it is safe for ducklings.
Though I guess if I have somebody bring in a 50pound back of flock raiser (ok for the chicks if they hatch? do we need grit for the chicks at this age?) - I can just bag it up and send it home with the ducklings that leave by the weekend.

 

[jgell]

I bought a 50 lbs bad of purina start and grow for about 16 bucks. I ask for a small donation from those taking the ducks and in return they get a 1 gallon freezer bag of food. I make my money back and still have left over feed for my ducklings at home. Plus I just did my taxes and deducted all incubator and brooder upgrades.