The Old Folks Home

[drumstick diva]

Wisher I've read around on BYC that the "crested" ducks with the tufted head feathers - carry a fatal gene - their skulls aren't completely sealed - like some vaulted skulls in silkies. I'm probably not saying it right- maybe some duck folks reading this will elaborate.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

...speaking of ducks, I took on duck eggs to hatch for a man. He provided me with about 45 of the nastiest eggs I have ever seen. I washed them and sprayed them with a weak Betadine solution.

At day 14, I candled and threw out all but 21 that all went into the hatcher on day 22 because they had started to pip. The first four pipped and zipped and popped out just fine. Several pipped and stopped, some didn't pip at all. I gave them about 36 hours and started to help. I managed to get 6 live ducklings out by helping, but one of the first four died while I was at work. Two of the ones I helped out have deformaties on the back of their heads. They look like the ones with the feather tufts, but they have other issues as well.

Is this typical of ducks? How likely is it an issue with incubation if there were also chicks cooking at the same time (which produced my best hatch ever!?)

I've incubated duck eggs with and without other species. Ducks should take 28 days so it sounds to me like these were partially incubated (maybe in a dirty nest) and then paused, then reincubated at your place. That would explain the issues.

My duck eggs are filthy if I leave them in the duck house longer than a day. The in and out of the muddy ducks cause the eggs to be covered in a layer of grime that is unparalleled in the chicken world.

 

[Latestarter]

With filthy duck eggs being the norm under broody ducks, is it really necessary (aside form keeping the bator clean) to clean them up real well before incubation? Or do the wet duck paddles continually refresh the filth coating on the eggs when brooding? Just curious.

 

[vehve]

We haven't kept ducks, but Karin occasionally brings home duck eggs, sometimes from the uncleaned pile, and I can imagine putting those in an incubator as is would be a bad idea. The partially incubated theory sounds viable.

 

[Wisher1000]

I do staggered hatches continuously. I tell anyone I hatch for that I will wash any dirty eggs so as not to introduce any bacteria into my incubator that would put other eggs at risk. I have not had any hatch rate issues from washed eggs, and I usually don't use the betadine if I only wash one or two eggs out of a clutch. I only did it this time because they were so nasty that they required more scrubbing than I would have liked to have done. I think these ducks are Khaki Campbells, but I'm no duck expert.

 

[Bunnylady]

Khaki Campbell ducklings are chocolate brown, and they do come crested.

On the few occasions that I have tried to hatch duck eggs, I had even greater losses than when I did chicken eggs - frustrating, because when my ducks went broody, they could hatch, like, 16 out of 18 (how they could even cover that many, I have no idea).

 

[ronott1]

I do staggered hatches continuously. I tell anyone I hatch for that I will wash any dirty eggs so as not to introduce any bacteria into my incubator that would put other eggs at risk. I have not had any hatch rate issues from washed eggs, and I usually don't use the betadine if I only wash one or two eggs out of a clutch. I only did it this time because they were so nasty that they required more scrubbing than I would have liked to have done. I think these ducks are Khaki Campbells, but I'm no duck expert.

Washing dirty eggs is an industry standard for incubating. I wash dirty eggs too.

There are some odd ideas out there. I posted a picture of my Brinsea candler when I was candling from the bottom.



They thought I was going to kill the embryo by candling like this!

That egg hatched just fine thank you very much.

 

[getaclue]

Congratulations on your interview, Deb!

I bought a gallon of Oxine, for cleaning the incubator(s), and I think I will be using it to clean a few of the eggs when I start hatching. Most of my eggs are clean, but I have this one hen.... If the nest box is in use, she walks around, and out plops the egg on the ground. There are 2 identical large nest boxes in that coop for 4 hens. In typical chicken fashion, they'll line up to use the one, but won't use the other one. Anyway, many people swear by the Oxine if the eggs have to be cleaned before hatching.

Diva, we too paid for everything as we got it, never using credit. Part of the problem when we were looking to get a loan to buy a house was no credit history. It's taken us a little while to establish a good credit history, but we use the credit card when we have the money, pay the regular payments on it for a couple months, then send a big payment to pay it way down. In a couple months, we repeat the process.

I'm the one that hates using credit cards. For years Dh has complained about how everyone he works with (mostly his closest co-workers) seems to have so much more money than we do. He complained how bad I was with money. I've been hearing this for years, but not dwelling on his criticism of how I handled money. Everything we own is paid for. I tried telling him that most of his co-workers were in debt, and living way beyond their means. Another thing, both husband, and wife had to work to keep up with their payments. (I got a lot of this information when the wives would get together, and it so happened that every so often, one of them would be looking for a new job, and complaining about their money situation). He assured me I was wrong, and didn't know what I was talking about.

Fast forward to present day, and he, and a lot of his closest co-workers are now looking at retirement over the next year to 5 years. Most attended a retirement seminar at work. They're singing a new song now. He found out we're in pretty good shape for his retirement. His co-workers, on the other hand, are now revealing how many loans they have, and how much credit card debt they've accumulated, and are crying the blues.

Yes, having some credit is good, but keeping it in check, paying it down, and living within one's means is still much better in the long run.

 

[vehve]

But in some ways having debt can help you accumulate wealth as well. For instance, buying your own house early and financing it with a loan tends to be a good idea. That way, instead of paying rent you're actually saving money while paying for your living, since you're paying off the debt. I wish we would have bought something earlier. There are extreme cases too though, for instance in Sweden people traditionally have mostly paid interest off of their mortgages. They just passed a new law there, limiting the pay back time to 105 years (!). You can pay off interest for 5 years, but after that, a percent of the loan has to be paid off annually. They've calculated that the average length of a mortgage there has been 140 years (!!!!!). That really doesn't sound like a healthy market to me. Basically people have been taking loans that their grandchildren eventually have paid off. In most cases, the only way to get rid of the debt has been to sell the property.

Here in Finland, the typical timeframe has been 30 years, but I think most banks prefer 20-25 years with new loans now. Still, with interest rates as low as they have been lately, the cost of living has been quite low. Property prices have gone up quite a bit though, so when the interest rates eventually go up, people are going to have a hard time paying off their loans. One nice thing about the Finnish housing market is that it tends to be pretty stable, you don't have areas going up and down in the same way as in some countries. Of course, there are some exceptions to the rule, like the city of Salo which is like a mellow version of Detroit at the moment with no one buying houses there due to bad employment options, mainly caused by Nokia packing up their bags. A large percentage of the population there was employed by Nokia, probably around 15-30%, so closing down their functions there hit the area pretty hard.

 

[vehve]

Oh, something I've meant to ask about US mortgages. Can you just walk away from a loan by handing over the keys to the bank over there? Here you can typically cover up to a max of 70%-80% of the loan with the property you're buying.