Problem with duck eggs

[lolli5]

Hi All,
Long time no posting, I'm back for your expertise I did look hard but I can't seem to find the answers so I hope you don't mind me posing my questions here.
Among all our fowl, we have 10 khaki campbell ducks and 3 drakes together. We assumed the eggs are fertile but they are not hatching out well. We have given 2 other people 12 eggs each to hatch for themselves and we have tried ourselves aswell. We have gotten 6 ducklings out of 12 eggs and one man has gotten 2 and the other man got none. We have tried a few times, with the incubator and the ducks. We are very puzzled. The eggs don't seem to be fertilized after all and we can't figure out why.
Can anyone shed some light on this please?
Any response is greatly appreciated!!

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Hi All,
Long time no posting, I'm back for your expertise I did look hard but I can't seem to find the answers so I hope you don't mind me posing my questions here.
Among all our fowl, we have 10 khaki campbell ducks and 3 drakes together. We assumed the eggs are fertile but they are not hatching out well. We have given 2 other people 12 eggs each to hatch for themselves and we have tried ourselves aswell. We have gotten 6 ducklings out of 12 eggs and one man has gotten 2 and the other man got none. We have tried a few times, with the incubator and the ducks. We are very puzzled. The eggs don't seem to be fertilized after all and we can't figure out why.
Can anyone shed some light on this please?
Any response is greatly appreciated!!

There are a lot of possible causes for failure to hatch that are not related to fertility itself.
You say the eggs don't seem to be fertilized, are you basing that solely on them not hatching or have you done any egg-topsies to confirm that no development set in (indicating being infertile) or to determine at what point development stopped? Have you cracked any unset eggs to sample for a baseline of fertility rates of the eggs by checking the germinal discs on the yolks?

 

[lolli5]

There are a lot of possible causes for failure to hatch that are not related to fertility itself.
You say the eggs don't seem to be fertilized, are you basing that solely on them not hatching or have you done any egg-topsies to confirm that no development set in (indicating being infertile) or to determine at what point development stopped? Have you cracked any unset eggs to sample for a baseline of fertility rates of the eggs by checking the germinal discs on the yolks?

Myself and one of the men we gave the eggs to cracked some open and they were just rotten, no development at all. However now you mention it we had the duck eggs under a hen (we have had great hen mammies) and she rose and when we broke them there was development.
To be honest, no, I didn't check any other eggs. We do eat the duck eggs aswell and they are fertile. Although we haven't eaten them ourselves in a while. I sell them and because we were using the eggs to hatch there wasn't enough for us!! The reason we went straight for the 'eggs not being fertilized' was because of the other two men having no luck either.

 

[lolli5]

After replying to Ol Grey Mare's post it got me thinking. It isn't that the eggs are not fertile, it's the storage of the eggs. I have started to keep them on top of the fridge inside. I used to keep them outside in the shed. I looked up information on this and I am going to make some storage changes and see what happens!
Thanks Ol Grey Mare for getting me to think of other reasons