Setting duck eggs now?

[judyc]

How much luck have you had incubating duck eggs at this time of year? I'm getting BEI eggs, and don't want to waste them, but going on vacation in two weeks, so really don't want to babysit them either. Will the hen go broody, do you think?

 

[KellyHM]

I popped 7 in my bator about 2 weeks ago and they're all developing so far.

 

[neferset]

I was fine until the last bell rang. I had 13 eggs. All were developing nicely. I saw little duckling legs kicking. Temperatures were stable. Humidity was reasonably high (it was raining all the time). Then the weekend before the hatch, we had a cold front push through. My cat pushed the front door open over night. Temperatures in my kitchen plummeted, which caused the temps in my incubator to crash. Over the course of the hatching week, the atmospheric humidity was so low that it was sucking all the liquid out of my incubators.

I still got two ducklings. I felt lucky. I'm trying again. This hatch, I'm going to get bigger sponges and put rocks in the bottom of my hatcher to try to keep things stable.

 

[judyc]

Wow! That's pretty rough! I've got 2 eggs in the coop, but I suspect Ms. Duck is laying somewhere else as well.

Could you tell me how often BEI's lay...every day, or every other day?