Muscovy excitement! (and questions)

[tmorgan46]

How neat is that?!?!?!?!?!? The absolute marvels of nature! Congrats on the new addition and the two more it sounds like you're soon to have!

 

[mpghm]

Three happy ducklings. The one that came out the wrong end of the egg had a splayed leg, so I put it in a hobble made of felt and tape. It stands ok now, and gets around as well.

A few more eggs pipped but never came out, one even started making a bigger hole and then stopped moving. Perhaps i messed things up, even though i misted and covered the eggs with a sheet of plastic while removing the other ducklings. Today is day 38 (I miscounted earlier) and I'll give it another day or two before turning off the incubator.

 

[rainbowchicks]

Very excited to find out our little pekin was actually a muscovy!! Any ideas on boy or girl??

 

[mpghm]

Oh my! More excitement. Another one hatched yesterday, and this morning there were three more.

 

[tmorgan46]

Very cool!! What a great surprise!! We candled those in the incubator last night and very exciting to see all the movement in most of the eggs still going. There were two or three which I think need to be culled but decided to give them another week just to see what happens.

 

[mpghm]

The first 3 (out of 8!)

 

[tmorgan46]

Oh man!! What cuties!!

 

[mpghm]

I added the last four to the brooder this morning. Cuteness + chaos! I'll try to get some video tonight, it's amazing to watch.

And I spotted movement in one of the remaining eggs, I'm very curious how it will do because I haven't been very good about keeping temp/humidity up in the incubator the last couple of days. For example, the lid was open several minutes as I changed the floor covering yesterday, the tea towel that was in there was getting slick from all the down/fluff and their legs were splaying.

@tmorgan - how are yours coming along?

 

[tmorgan46]

@mpghm things are tracking right along. We started with 25 eggs in the incubator and we're down to 14 or 15 I think. Which isn't terrible but for Muscovies I guess that's within the typical range, maybe a bit higher than normal. But we're not to the end yet and I know of at least two or three more that will get culled this weekend. Those are just wishful thinking on my part. ;-)
We have about 10 days left, so I'm thinking next week I'll put them in lock down, take them out of the auto-turner and put them on the "floor" of the incubator and try to get the humidity up as high as we can. I used a few of the plastic eggs that are popular at Easter each half sitting in one of the egg cradles and filled half way with water. That's helped us keep the level ranging between 50% on the low side and 65% on the high side. Other than that, it's like watching grass grow, except when candling; that's amazing to watch a clump of goo start moving and developing into a living thing. More to follow. Good luck on the remainder of your hatch!!!

Troy & Tina

 

[rainbowchicks]

Im pretty sure Cupcake is starting to get her caruncles!!