Mixing quail eggs with duck eggs?? Help!

[Buffalo Mountain Legacy]

So I currently have an incubator running that I placed quail eggs in at the beginning of this week. So they have been in there only about 4 days. I also have a khaki Campbell that is currently broody sitting on about 12 eggs. This is her first time being broody. I didn't think any of them were viable because the only male I have is a Pekin that is horrible at his job. Regardless I candled her eggs today and found that actually several of the eggs are developing quite well. Great! Just one thing, this particular khaki Campbell is not pinned up. So her nest is out in a huge brush pile in front of our house. I'm honestly surprised she's made it this long without getting snatched up by some wild critter. She's very hard to catch though. Anyway, we have cats that roam the property. They could careless about the ducks. They are mainly for mousing. When and if those babies hatch though, the cats will be all about grabbing some baby ducks. So we are hoping to either get the momma and the babies moved to a secure location before the cats find them or try to catch the babies and get them moved. I'm not sure how this is going to go down honestly. In the mean time though, the eggs developing are about half way to being done. If I took some and put them in the incubator with the quail, knowing the duck eggs will hatch before the quail do, would that cause issues with the quail eggs continuing to develop? My thoughts were if I moved some of the duck eggs to the incubator at least we would have a chance at a few making It past the cat claws. Should I just leave them all with momma and say what will be will be?

 

[AOrchard]

I don't have a lot of incubator experience, but I do have quails I put under broody chickens, and the biggest issue is the ducklings all have to be removed before the quail eggs hatch, the hatching quails are very vulnerable to getting stepped on and squished. The quail eggs should tolerate you removing the ducklings just fine, they can tolerate a rather long time without a hen on them in nature, so incubator shouldn't be any different.

 

[Mary Poopins Love]

How is everything going?

 

[artbykarenehaley]

How exciting! I would make sure the duck eggs and quail eggs have a partition so the ducklings don't step on the quail eggs when they hatch, although I'm guessing at this point I'm late to the party?

 

[Wonder Quails]

Hope it goes well!