Safety holes? Please help!

[Hariettehighpants]

Hi everyone, Im new here and to hatching. My in laws have a small hobby farm and my son asked if he could incubate some eggs for them (with my help/guidance). We successfully hatched 3 chicks (out of 5) and now we are trying duck eggs. We only started with 2 and one quit at day 16 and now I'm worried I will lose the last remaining one. I candled it at day 24 and saw what I thought was an internal pip, 24 hours later and still no external pip I panicked and put in a small safety hole. It is now day 27 and still nothing and I am now thinking (after lots and lots of research in the mean time) that it may not have internally pipped and what i saw was the duckling pushing on the membrane. Now I'm so worried I have shrink wrapped the little guy in there? Any advice on what I should do? The humidity and temps are perfect and I can see it is still moving. I feel so bad about this.

 

[NatJ]

The internet tells me that most duck eggs should hatch at 28 days, with muscovies taking 35 days.

So at day 27, yours is probably not ready to hatch yet.


I don't know if you've found this article yet, but it has many details about assisting a baby bird to hatch (including when to assist and when to keep waiting.)
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/guide-to-assisted-hatching-for-all-poultry.72886/