My hatchling didn’t survive

[CityFarmerRob]

Yesterday at about 4 I noticed my duckling started pipping so I knew I needed to check at the 24 hour mark but mom was up so I went to look the egg was gone I found it by their pool with ants in it’s shell. It didn’t look injured other than where the ants were at. What did I do wrong this is her first egg lay. My daughter found the baby and is 3 and beside herself. I won’t lie I’m a little bummed but there is another egg I just don’t know if it’s viable? I plan to try the water test soon so we can stop her brooding if it’s for nothing.

Well I'm not sure about ducks but I started keeping chickens a couple years ago and I got an incubator that was two levels. It held 48 on the bottom and 48 on the top 45 of the bottom ones hatched with no problem only five of the 48 on the top level hatched and survived. And they had difficulty getting out of their shell. I was pretty bummed too man. I believe the reason for this was the water reservoir for humidity was under directly the bottom shelf and the sensor for the humidity was at the very top. Humidity stayed between 75-78% and temp was approximately 38 degrees Celsius. And the temperature seem to say consistent on both levels and I checked that with a digital thermometer. But with such a big difference the only thing I could think of is how close they were to the water source and the humidity that those eggs were seeing versus the humidity that that's center was telling me. So I try to really make sure that my temperature and humidity parameters are accurate and proper for the egg I'm trying to hatch, it seemed to me to have a big effect on how successful the hatching was. Keep your head up, a lot of us go through this and I guess it's just all apart of keeping animals or in this case birds.