Nothing yet. Yes, this would be 1 day past. Day 28 was yesterday. I am not sure how to make a safe hole without causing serious damage. I candled again, and when I tap on the shell...nothing. On the 2 that looked like they dipped, there isn't anything visible on the bottom of the egg anymore. Its completely dark. On the other one it still has lots of space. I can't see movement on any of them, even when I tap. Is it possible that they are still alive without me seeing movement? How can I help them get the gooey stuff out so they can absorb?
I do have a confession to make. I don't have these babies at my house. I am hatching them in my classroom with my students as part of our oviparous animals/life cycles unit. That being said, I don't have control over the temperature/humidity fluctuations in the room and this being the weekend, I also am not there watching them constantly. I usually set the eggs on a Wednesday so that they are hatching during the week when we are there to watch, but I needed to set these eggs on a Friday because I didn't want to hold them over the weekend waiting for the next mid week day.
Please don't think I'm a horrible person for doing these this way. I have been able to get great hatch rates with my chickens over the years (In fact, I hatched 31 out of 38 chickens total this week in 3 different classrooms) so I thought this year it would be fun to try ducks too. Wow did these ducks sure take me back to my 1st chicken hatches! I feel like I don't know anything anymore! I have learned so much since I jumped on this thread from all of you, I feel like I should be paying somebody!
I can come back to my school tomorrow and try some things to see what I can do to help them or see if they are even able to be helped. In the meantime, I still have 8 more that will go into lockdown on Tuesday. I would like to be proactive and do what I can to prevent these from meeting the same sticky fate! Right now the bator is at 33% humidity so I am going to leave it like it is for now.
Thanks!
OK safe hole, I would like for you to get an egg just a regular egg out of the fridge, use this egg to practice. Then get a needle, tweezers, something with a sharp end so you can pierce it. This will help you get the idea of how much pressure you need to apply on the egg without smashing it and how much pressure you don't need.. I usually take the tweezers and make a little circle to drill through, you do this at the air cell. Just needs to be a small hole, nothing big, like the size of a tip of a pen.
I knew you were hatching in the classroom, I remember you saying something when you first started.. LOL I dont think bad about you AT ALL, I think it's great, kids need to learn not everything goes as plan even if you seem like you have everything right.
Chickens are Different compair to ducks. If it helps, I'm having the SAME problem a humidity issue causes my ducks to become sticky, I have already lost 10, So even the most experience ones have problems. If you humidity is that high your best bet is to start spraying them. i believe spraying them helps evaporate some of the moisture, so if you start a new batch keep that in mind, spray at least one to two times a day but at this point it's not going to do you any good because the damage is already done.
Once they get sticky, the only thing you can do is RAISE that humidity during lockdown, Raise it up to about 70-75, what this does is loosen up that thick gooy stuff..giving them SOME sort of a chance. Once it's one day after the due date make the safe hole, wait 24 hours then we can open them up, if they are still alive, will try to clean them up and help a little it will take TIME. Could take all night....So you may want to bring them home at that point..
