Need Help QUICK!!!-- Update---Pictures on pg. 5

[easttxchick]

Baby ducks can eat Gamebird Starter, Flock Raiser or Unmedicated Chick Start.
You can put them together for a couple of days, but then baby ducks will turn the brooder into a swamp so you'll have to move them when that starts so the chicks don't get chilled.

 

[mandelyn]

Yup ^^ that (gave her a minute to post first so that I don't post the same thing!)

If you make allowances in the brooder to catch the waste water they can all live together for a good 3 weeks until the ducklings require less heat than the chickens. The chickens need heat longer, duckies not so much. I mean you can't put them out in 50 degree evenings, but they can certainly be taken down from 90.

I have 1 chicken living with two call ducks in a rabbit hutch. Water falls through the bottom and the chicken gets to stay dry. You should see those little ducks panic when I take "their" chicken to hold it!

Towels placed under the waterer can absorb a good amount of it. But the ducks seriously are messy, all because of the water play. The trick to brooding them with chickens is water management.

 

[Amiga]

ditto Mandelyn, one key to successful (read: doesn't drive you nuts and keeps ducklings healthy) duckling brooding is water management.

 

[stitch81]

I just got off the phone with our local conservation board. He's doing some checking into who can come and get the ducklings after they hatch. There are a few places in our state that re-integrate them into the wild. I think I'm going to set up another hatcher, this is just going to be cutting it way too close. My chicken eggs are supposed to go into the hatcher on Monday. I'm just not positive on these duck eggs as far as what day they are on. If I had to end up switching the duck and chicken eggs (chicken eggs to the hatcher, duck eggs to the smaller incubator) It would take maybe 10 minutes to switch everything and get the humidity in the incubator upped to 70%. Would that compromise the entire hatch, or do you think it would be okay? The incubator (a homemade 10 gallon tank) is full at the moment with chicken eggs and is sitting at 35% humidity. The hatcher is a homemade 20 gallon tank and has much more room, but was specificially set up with a higher humidity in mind (I have saturated papertowels in the bottom to get the 70% humidity and there is no real way to get the humidity lowered for the chicken eggs, if I were to switch them now...)

 

[stitch81]

We have a pip!!

 

[mandelyn]

Yay! Keep us posted!

 

[ducks_rcool329]

Quote:
We expect pictures

 

[stitch81]

will do. Right now it is just a crack in the egg. It's been like that for the last 2 hours. Any idea how long it takes to break through?

 

[the4heathernsmom]

 

[Miss Lydia]

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