DuckMagistra
Chirping
- Aug 23, 2020
- 37
- 90
- 61
Well, I have a great report! We had 17 duck eggs incubating. On Day 22, we thought none of them would make it. We had grossly overdone the humidity for 3 weeks and the air cell was tiny on all of them. We dried them out starting on Day 22-25 and the air cells grew a ton.
We then followed all of your wonderful advice and over the next 3 days successfully hatched out 13! Two died before we intervened. But two more, who never internally pipped, were still moving, so we decided to try and save them. All the others had hatched out very early (one on Day 25), which is why we thought Day 28 was late. (We think the eggs "started" to incubate for 2 days before we turned on the heater. We stored the eggs in the incubator for 2 days with the lid on trying to decide if we were going to incubate outside or inside).
We opened the air cell on the 2 latecomers on Day 28 and when we did this, we thought we had killed them. They never internally pipped, so we actually punched a hole over the bill in the membrane itself, applied coconut oil and kept chirping at the little guys for 2 days.
They never came out on their own and the membrane started to dry out and so we systematically removed the shell around them (over 2 days) until all the was left was the umbilical cord and sac. We watched for blood vessels, waited until they dried out, chipped off the shell only, and then once the membrane dried out, used tweezers to pull it away (making sure not to pull the wet membrane with it).
These 2 were floppy like I see kids with Down's syndrome (low tone) as a PT. Then lay on their side and breathed. That was about all.
So, since I am a PT, I started doing PT with them. I found that high plush carpet with loose fibers worked great for "propping" them up to get weight on their feet. We did "leg presses" with our hands serving as the resistance plate like you would do on a leg press machine. I did little coconut oil massages of their feet which were all misshapen.
Well, here they are! Meet Phoenix and Barely There. Truely, Phoenix was nearly gone and I started doing limb massages on him (like you would if someone was left out in the snow) and then, he decided to live. THANK YOU for all the help!!!! Such a great group.
We then followed all of your wonderful advice and over the next 3 days successfully hatched out 13! Two died before we intervened. But two more, who never internally pipped, were still moving, so we decided to try and save them. All the others had hatched out very early (one on Day 25), which is why we thought Day 28 was late. (We think the eggs "started" to incubate for 2 days before we turned on the heater. We stored the eggs in the incubator for 2 days with the lid on trying to decide if we were going to incubate outside or inside).
We opened the air cell on the 2 latecomers on Day 28 and when we did this, we thought we had killed them. They never internally pipped, so we actually punched a hole over the bill in the membrane itself, applied coconut oil and kept chirping at the little guys for 2 days.
They never came out on their own and the membrane started to dry out and so we systematically removed the shell around them (over 2 days) until all the was left was the umbilical cord and sac. We watched for blood vessels, waited until they dried out, chipped off the shell only, and then once the membrane dried out, used tweezers to pull it away (making sure not to pull the wet membrane with it).
These 2 were floppy like I see kids with Down's syndrome (low tone) as a PT. Then lay on their side and breathed. That was about all.
So, since I am a PT, I started doing PT with them. I found that high plush carpet with loose fibers worked great for "propping" them up to get weight on their feet. We did "leg presses" with our hands serving as the resistance plate like you would do on a leg press machine. I did little coconut oil massages of their feet which were all misshapen.
Well, here they are! Meet Phoenix and Barely There. Truely, Phoenix was nearly gone and I started doing limb massages on him (like you would if someone was left out in the snow) and then, he decided to live. THANK YOU for all the help!!!! Such a great group.
