Some advice needed for first year brood...I want baby ducks!!

[NotAFarm]

Good luck with the new thread Sunshine, I'm headed over to check it out.

 

[helios]

Still working on the duck incubation thread...have just been so busy and a bunch of links I messaged from my phone didn't come through to my e-mail...grrr.

My incubator eggs are at day 7, and I had an exciting first candle--I think only 2 or 3 were infertile or too old to develop and I may have seen a tiny heart beating. I've had one side consistently lower in temps and a few eggs on that side may have had blood rings. However, I'm having multiple problems with keeping my incubator stable. I moved it to an interior closet with louvered doors since the room I had it in was swinging up to 72 during the day and down to 62 at night. I can't seem to keep the humidity up above 45%, but I'm not too worried about that at this point. My Brinsea Spot Check came in and it's great to be able to instantly check the water wiggler temp on the "cold" side of the incubator--I've propped up the cold side a bit to help level out the air layers along the bottom of the incubator. I've had some low readings when checking in the morning (like 94's and 95's sometimes) and have tried to nudge the thermostat up when I go to bed, nudge it down when I wake up (I added a large dial to make "nudges" possible on the LG). However, I was having consistently low readings over the last three days, so I've been bumping the thermostat up bit by bit and generally monkeying around with the temps too much and it finally bit me. (Oh, and I work two jobs on Tuesdays, so I have about 1 hour of free time between Tuesday morning and Wednesday when I get off work at my day job--not ideal when worrying about eggies in the 'bator).

Yesterday I had left my nudge up in temp for the night alone when I left for work because I had a reading of 96 in the morning. I asked my boyfriend to check the temp if he stopped home during the day and kept my phone on me to walk him through anything he might need to do to correct a temp spike, like pop open the side of the incubator for a few seconds to lower a temp spike temporarily until I could get home to adjust it. Well, he called and said he saw 98 on the Brinsea. I said, "Great, just leave it alone and it should be fine until I get home." "Oh, and I opened it up like you said." Sigh... I had him read the temperature again and it was waaaay low, like 94 something, which I thought was weird, but then it went back up to 97 or so as he watched it stabilize. So I turned it up a tad, watched it last night, turned and candled a little late to make sure it stabilized, and I came to find that my water wiggler had leaked most of its water out (cheap zipper baggies

). I moved the Brinsea sensor to hang at mid-egg level and bumped the temp up a hair at 11:30 since I still had 98's on the cool side. When I checked this morning, had a reading of 105!! I popped the top off and bumped the thermo down, but I'm thinking that I'll be seeing a lot of blood rings over the next few days. So very sad to waste so many good eggs

I think our spring warm-up raised the house temp too much--it was 72 in there last night with the added heat from the 'bator. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on some tough little duckies pulling through, but will use the eggs to find a stable setting over the weekend and finally mark up my modified dial for future reference.

My hen has five more eggs in her nest, but I'm running out of time for doing an indoor spring hatch, as we'll be leaving town for a few days in early May and I don't know if I can find a duckling sitter.

 

[askjcm2005]

Well unfortunately I don’t have much advice as my ducks (pekins) have never been interested in sitting to hatch there own eggs so my silkie chickens do it for them. The silkie have literally not moved at all (that I have seen at least) in a couple weeks and this week we got our 1st 2 hatched EVER!! I want to get an incubator but my mom wont let me because of electricity costs so luckily my silkies are more then happy to help them out.

 

[helios]

Quote:
I've thought about getting a broody chicken to sit on my duck eggs for me, but I don't have electricity on the pond, so I think I'd end up with a small coop by the house at least in the winter. The ducks are enough work in the wintertime!

I do have at least two more hens laying now--but they decided that they like laying in the mud on the shore of the pond. At least I won't have to wait long to get a clutch to incubate or let my nesting duck brood if my hot incubator yesterday ruined all of my pretty eggs

Congrats on your two babies

and hopefully your mom will give in on the incubator. I'm not sure how much electricity they use--I'll let you know if our electric bill goes up this month.

 

[helios]

Just took a walk around the pond to look for eggs...zero, but decided to peek in the duck house to see how many eggs were in the nest (12 at last count two nights ago). I noticed the groups were a little different today and no pair across the pond, so asked if anyone was inside when I poked my head in. Spartacus was either laying her morning egg or has started setting
I haven't seen her leave the house yet, so I'm hoping that she'll still be there later today and I can sneak in late tonight and slip the four eggs in that I saved from my egg eaters (long story in another thread)

 

[helios]

Don't know if anyone is following this thread except for me...but that's ok, since it gives me an easy way to log what's going on out on the pond with automatic timestamps

Unfortunately, I merely caught my first laying hen laying her Saturday egg

She was out on the pond after fussing over the nest and getting a bite to eat. However, I did check the nest on Sunday and there seemed to be an awful lot of eggs in there. I didn't want to pull them out of the nest, as she pushes them snugly into the hay and bedding to keep them out of the drafts. I thought I counted 19 eggs on Saturday, but thought I must have miscounted, expecting more like 15 or 16. I put a min/max thermometer out by the nest Saturday night and the air temps got down to 26 degrees! I'm hoping that the eggs are ok down in the bedding, but I don't have a min/max thermometer with a probe to see how warm the bedding is under her nest.

I have had two other hens start to lay (and my boyfriend swears he saw an egg on the east shore where Penelope and her boyfriends hang out, but I didn't find any). I started a thread to see how I could stop them from eating their eggs--I lost 6 eggs, saved 4, lost another single egg that I saw, then hadn't found any eggs since last Wednesday. I thought they were maybe laying in the water...but after counting 23 eggs

last night, I think my other girls have found the nest and think it's a safe spot to lay. I'm a bit nervous about the cannibal duck(s) finding the nest and eating the eggs, but have resolved to wait it out.

This morning, I added the four eggs I'd saved from the egg-eaters to the top of the nest and covered it. Those stored eggs are a week old and the oldest in the nest are about two weeks old (that's where the timestamps on these posts come in handy--I'll have to check those ages). We've had unseasonably cold nights in the lower 20's and I'm guessing I'll have to candle and sniff some eggs if she starts setting or I'll have loads of rotten eggs in the duck house, but if 30 eggs (23 + 4 + 3 from today) doesn't make that girl sit on her nest and play nice, I'm considering locking her up in the duck house with a small run to nudge her along. Hopefully the cool temps have arrested the development of the eggs and many will survive this excruciating wait for instincts to kick in. I also started wondering last night if the deep bedding (she dug all the way down through about 8 inches of bedding to the soil to start the nest) has made her nest unncommonly deep and she wants to "fill" it before setting.

Still have six or seven survivors with just over a week to lockdown

Can't wait for my little black duckies!!

 

[helios]

Had my first pip this morning! Only one egg pipped, but he got his internal and external done from last night to this morning...I could have missed the internal pip last might when candling, as I was a bit upset over the air sac disappearing in my favorite egg. It may have internally pipped and been positioned just so and drowned

I hope it wasn't my fault for missing an internal pip and turning it afterwards. Kind of worried that the early external pip will end up drying him out, but have put all eggs with air sacs up and added another sponge this morning. Hoping I have a zip when I get home!

 

[helios]

Three external pips and counting...the waiting is excruciating!!

I finally heard some peeps from the little buggers last night. I had my boyfriend listen this morning and he thought it was pretty cool

I'm hoping to have some zipping by the time I get home from work and my lovely bf will be reporting if he stops by home during the day.

 

[helios]

Babies!! Can you tell who hatched last?

In the end, I had four eggs survive the temp spike to hatch. I left two others in the incubator hoping I was wrong about them quitting: one questionable egg (it was really dark, so hard to candle) and my favorite egg that may have drowned after internally pipping.

I missed the first hatch, as I was working, but my boyfriend texted me at around midnight "We have duck"

I got home around 1:15 AM and the second egg had zipped. I just caught it popping out on my phone's video, so I'll be posting that once I edit a bit off the end. Pretty cool... They were knocking around in the incubator, so I put them in the brooder around 3:30 AM and dipped their bills in the vitamin-fortified water. They came a bit early, so I had to take a few personal hours at work and run to TSC for some game starter. The first two (I'm pretty sure the larger one is a drake, and the smaller one has some yellow on her chest, so definitely a hen) were eating and drinking by the time I left for work.

By that time, I had a third egg starting to zip and cheeping really loud, so I wasn't surprised that when my BF checked on them in the afternoon, it was half out of the egg and walking around the incubator by the time I got home. It was crawling up onto the sponges and getting close to the heating element, so I put #3 in the brooder and popped in every ten minutes or so to encourage the fourth duck to zip (I hadn't heard peeping from that egg until it was alone in the incubator). I have to admit, I "helped" #4 zip around 10 PM and he popped out just after 11, so I went to bed. I don't think I did any damage, but I did feel bad that I rushed him, as when he (or she) pushed out, it didn't have to stretch its neck to pop the zipped egg cap off and kind of layed there for a few minutes still wrapped up in egg-shape. I think he would've hatched naturally overnight, but I was worried that the quiet in the incubator might make him lose spirit (next time, I'll have the brooder set up near the incubator so the dry duckies can talk to the pipping and zipping duckies.

It was fine when I got up around 3:45 AM and checked...walking and cheeping around the incubator, so I put it in with the other three in the brooder to dry off. The fluffed up chicks got so excited by the new addition! They started preening him (I hope it wasn't pecking!). They were all happy and fluffy this morning. I think they should have picked off all their feather sheaths by tomorrow and be in full-on cute mode.

I forgot to check for yellow on #4's chest, but I think I may have three hens!! Their mama has a white spot on her chest, so they are not ideally bred, but I'm on my way to a balanced flock

Ahh, now back to the incubation thread...

 

[CityChick15]

WOW CONGRATS!
They are soo cute!

I have one Indian Runner Female and I am considering getting her a buddy. She is only 5 weeks old so I would like to wait until she is all feathered out before I bring in another fuzzy butt.. I can only handle on kiddo at a time. Maybe by next year I will be hatching my own little ones!

PLEASE POST MORE PIC AND VIDEOS!!