- Apr 24, 2012
- 49
- 5
- 69
So two weeks ago my next door neighbours piebald duck was taken by a goanna (this is a large toothy lizard) she was sitting on twelve eggs in their back garden. My neighbours knowing i work with birds called me in to help and when i arrived presented me with eight cool eggs wrapped in a shirt, while they thought the duck had been off then nest a couple of hours they had opened an egg half an hour before and the chick had still been alive and was there anything i could do to. I am a wildlife carer who specialises in birds and while over the years i have received a few eggs from various mishaps i am much more suited to diagnosing and treating birds a little older than the ones i received, consequently i am the owner of a brooder and a heat pad rather than an incubator..
said brooder is a 13yr old A.B newlife with a malfunctioning thermometer.
Still, i thought it was worth a shot so turned the brooder on to warm and set them on the heat pad to give them a boost till everything was set, as you can imagine there was no humidity and it took another couple of hours before i could put them in, there was no time to stabalise the temp or even make sure it would hold the heat.. thus began a very long week +.
The owners had said she had been sitting for two weeks, seven of the eggs were small, like medium chicken eggs rather than duck and the last a huge egg near twice the size of the others.. unoriginally i named him big egg.
I candled the eggs and found that seven were very dark and still, even after their traumatic day, a little wiggly. the last was grey and when i through it down the hill exploded mightliy. Big egg was one of the movers.
The next weeks was horrific, the temp on the brooder would not set so during the day i had to manually adjust a minimum of once an hour to keep it in range, and through the night between 1am and 7 it was worse, i had to set my alarm every 30minutes just to keep on top of it, as needs must i put the brooder on the bed and slept with my head torch on so it wouldnt take so long to find in the dark. After a week of this the idea of another one was off the charts, i could hardly string a sentance together (let alone write my sociology essay
and when i did dream all i saw was eggs. Fortunatley the eggs gave me a break, one morning there was a change, when candled it looked like the air cell was collapsing and since by the owners reckoning there was still a week to go i thought finally they were sucombing to their mistreatment but as the chick was still moving i left it and continued to turn. A day later when i checked again he had made internal pip and the other eggs air cells were changing as well!
Checking again on hatching temp and humidity i read for the first time about lockdown and realised promtly that i'd missed it, i freaked out and joined backyard chickens worrying that my continued turning might have damaged the chicks. I upped the humidity and promised myself not to open the brooder again.
By the next morning he had pipped and the day after that all the others bar big egg also, my first egg had not moved since his initial pip tho and knowing the problems i'd been have with temp and humidity i decided to intervene. Over a period of 9 hours i picked into the air cell and whilst giving time for the blood vessles to recede carefully removed the membrane that had contracted around him, when the hole was big enough for escape i sat back and waited... sure enough half an hour after escape became available he wiggled his way out. 1 down 6 to go. i left the next four 36 hours between pip and no zip before assisting but only 1 was making any progress, i left him to it and assisted the others and another 8 hours and i had another 5 out (Mr yellow powered along and sorted his shell out himself, kicked it off, stood up looked at me with bright brown eyes and told me that that had been exhausting and where was his water, and his dinner..)
By the end of the 28th i had 6 grey and yellow ducklings, it had been four days since they moved in to the air cell, but much to my dismay big egg was still, no moving, shaking or piping. Indeed since i had broken my promise about opening the brooder i knew that there had been no movement in the egg at all for four days. In the end i had to think of the others and turn the temp down in the brooder, but what about big egg, no movement at all i looked and looked, but nothing, the only positive being that his big thick blood vesels still looked red under the candler, as a last resort, i requisitioned a broody hen that had just gone down and slipped the egg under her, just in case.. and gave up, even promising to open the egg today to see if maybe it was a double yolker or something to account for the eggs unusual size.. but i was too busy, (attending to the needs of voracious ducklings, (how can anything so small eat so much)
Tonight is the early morning of the 30th, it is 3 am. 2 hours ago i went past the hen and just on impulse decided to give that big egg one last check, wondering if my small torch would be bright enough... i reached under a vicious stripey (sussex x ?) and pulled out that great big egg and shone my torch.. and just thought i saw a little little shadow in the cell.., not really believing it i turned the egg looking for confirmation but still expecting to see nothing and peep!! that little bugger peeped at me with a big deep peep (because he is a giant!) i was so surprised i nearly dropped his egg, still exclaiming at how clever and big he was and what a good job that fostering nasty stripey was doing i slipped him back under and left.. and now im waiting, that long hatching wait to see what will happen next, knowing he is nearly six days behind the others and that he has the perfect hatching place if i haven't stuffed him up too badly, not knowing why he has taken so much longer than the others and hoping he doesn't need any help..wondering at his continued survival after all this adversity.. come on stripey, come on big egg, YOU CAN DO IT!!!
said brooder is a 13yr old A.B newlife with a malfunctioning thermometer.
Still, i thought it was worth a shot so turned the brooder on to warm and set them on the heat pad to give them a boost till everything was set, as you can imagine there was no humidity and it took another couple of hours before i could put them in, there was no time to stabalise the temp or even make sure it would hold the heat.. thus began a very long week +.
The owners had said she had been sitting for two weeks, seven of the eggs were small, like medium chicken eggs rather than duck and the last a huge egg near twice the size of the others.. unoriginally i named him big egg.
I candled the eggs and found that seven were very dark and still, even after their traumatic day, a little wiggly. the last was grey and when i through it down the hill exploded mightliy. Big egg was one of the movers.
The next weeks was horrific, the temp on the brooder would not set so during the day i had to manually adjust a minimum of once an hour to keep it in range, and through the night between 1am and 7 it was worse, i had to set my alarm every 30minutes just to keep on top of it, as needs must i put the brooder on the bed and slept with my head torch on so it wouldnt take so long to find in the dark. After a week of this the idea of another one was off the charts, i could hardly string a sentance together (let alone write my sociology essay
and when i did dream all i saw was eggs. Fortunatley the eggs gave me a break, one morning there was a change, when candled it looked like the air cell was collapsing and since by the owners reckoning there was still a week to go i thought finally they were sucombing to their mistreatment but as the chick was still moving i left it and continued to turn. A day later when i checked again he had made internal pip and the other eggs air cells were changing as well! Checking again on hatching temp and humidity i read for the first time about lockdown and realised promtly that i'd missed it, i freaked out and joined backyard chickens
worrying that my continued turning might have damaged the chicks. I upped the humidity and promised myself not to open the brooder again.By the next morning he had pipped and the day after that all the others bar big egg also, my first egg had not moved since his initial pip tho and knowing the problems i'd been have with temp and humidity i decided to intervene. Over a period of 9 hours i picked into the air cell and whilst giving time for the blood vessles to recede carefully removed the membrane that had contracted around him, when the hole was big enough for escape i sat back and waited... sure enough half an hour after escape became available he wiggled his way out. 1 down 6 to go. i left the next four 36 hours between pip and no zip before assisting but only 1 was making any progress, i left him to it and assisted the others and another 8 hours and i had another 5 out (Mr yellow powered along and sorted his shell out himself, kicked it off, stood up looked at me with bright brown eyes and told me that that had been exhausting and where was his water, and his dinner..)
By the end of the 28th i had 6 grey and yellow ducklings, it had been four days since they moved in to the air cell, but much to my dismay big egg was still, no moving, shaking or piping. Indeed since i had broken my promise about opening the brooder i knew that there had been no movement in the egg at all for four days. In the end i had to think of the others and turn the temp down in the brooder, but what about big egg, no movement at all i looked and looked, but nothing, the only positive being that his big thick blood vesels still looked red under the candler, as a last resort, i requisitioned a broody hen that had just gone down and slipped the egg under her, just in case.. and gave up, even promising to open the egg today to see if maybe it was a double yolker or something to account for the eggs unusual size.. but i was too busy, (attending to the needs of voracious ducklings, (how can anything so small eat so much
) Tonight is the early morning of the 30th, it is 3 am. 2 hours ago i went past the hen and just on impulse decided to give that big egg one last check, wondering if my small torch would be bright enough... i reached under a vicious stripey (sussex x ?) and pulled out that great big egg and shone my torch.. and just thought i saw a little little shadow in the cell.., not really believing it i turned the egg looking for confirmation but still expecting to see nothing and peep!! that little bugger peeped at me with a big deep peep (because he is a giant!) i was so surprised i nearly dropped his egg, still exclaiming at how clever and big he was and what a good job that fostering nasty stripey was doing i slipped him back under and left.. and now im waiting, that long hatching wait to see what will happen next, knowing he is nearly six days behind the others and that he has the perfect hatching place if i haven't stuffed him up too badly, not knowing why he has taken so much longer than the others and hoping he doesn't need any help..wondering at his continued survival after all this adversity.. come on stripey, come on big egg, YOU CAN DO IT!!!
