The Quack Shack

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I have literally never heard of an incubator with a gel pack like that - you can use water bottles and such in an incubator as a heat sink, but placing eggs on top of a large gel pack that spans the whole incubator is a new one to me, lol.

Where is the heating element? In most incubators it's above the eggs, so the following advice is based on that.

Still air, the temperature should be 101.5 F measured at the tops of the eggs. Since there isn't air circulation, they are prone to hot and cold spots, so it's good to rotate the eggs around to different spots in the incubator when you turn them

Thank you very much for your answer! - It is a bit complicated, if you look at the picture below, the heating element is located at the very bottom of the box, under those gel-packs that i have placed in there:

The gel-packs were my idea, the incubator came with two plastic bags, made out of a rather thick foil. The instructions say to fill water in one bag, seal it by wrapping, then placing that water cushion into the second bag and put that on top of the heating element.
I thought replacing the water with a freezer gel-pack is a better solution because:
a. Less prone to leakage and flooding
b. Higher thermal mass compared to water

I like the idea of having the eggs in contact with a large thermal mass, in fact a hen, sitting on top of the eggs is nothing more than a thermal mass too. And the heat is transported from the hen to the egg through conduction not convection…

 

[Canadian Wind]

Thank you very much for your answer! - It is a bit complicated, if you look at the picture below, the heating element is located at the very bottom of the box, under those gel-packs that i have placed in there:

The gel-packs were my idea, the incubator came with two plastic bags, made out of a rather thick foil. The instructions say to fill water in one bag, seal it by wrapping, then placing that water cushion into the second bag and put that on top of the heating element.
I thought replacing the water with a freezer gel-pack is a better solution because:
a. Less prone to leakage and flooding
b. Higher thermal mass compared to water

I like the idea of having the eggs in contact with a large thermal mass, in fact a hen, sitting on top of the eggs is nothing more than a thermal mass too. And the heat is transported from the hen to the egg through conduction not convection…

If you really want the air flow, you could always jury-rig something with a computer fan?

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

A Junior update...

It is her day 6 with us. Condition remains so-so ... She'll run for 5 m / 15 ft and then plop down and just sit there like a toy duck. Will occassionally peck at grass experimentally but nothing at all like the other ducks who are always active.

She'll eat but only if you place food directly in front of her. She'll drink but just a little. She won't dunk her head in the water to clean the nares.

Contrary to the first several days, the other ducks care less and less about whether she manages to stay in the group, and will not react so easily (call back, come running) anymore when she is separated and calls out to them.

This is what we're doing:

- placed in a dog crate inside the duck coop overnight with food and medicated water (vitamin cocktail, lots of niacin) in the crate, the bowls being out of reach of other ducks; the only time we reliably know that she's been eating and that means mostly lettuce, peas and corn (barley not so much, chicken crumble hardly at all)

- whole or cracked corn - doesn't seem to matter, both options are eaten to the same degree

- attempts at feeding over the day while free to roam - very mixed results

- dunk her head in the water (we hold her close to the surface and she dunks by herself), morning, noon, evening - seems to enjoy that but would never do it on her own

Additionally, there seems to be some kind of infection? around one eye, and on the wings, the feathers have just the quills (the "stems"), the fine feathery part is not there. (You can see both problems if you enlarge the photo.) Also the feathers do not seem waterproof (looks soaked after rain, grooms for an hour afterwards).

I'm not very optimistic about how this works out.

Today she seems a little less strong and a little more confused than yesterday. I placed her in a large dog crate over the day, located roughly where the flock likes to stay, and put in medicated water and food as I would overnight. This way at least we'll know for sure how much she's eating and drinking.

In my general experience once a creature (plant or animal) is weak all kinds of problems just start piling up. My fear is that this would eventually lead to something which would also affect the other ducks who seem to be in great shape. This is the other reason for trying a large crate over the day again.

If I am misusing this topic and should open a separate one, please let me know.

View attachment 3527286

You are not misusing this threat, but if your time allows you should open a separate threat for Junior, just to draw the attention of more people to her situation, especially call out for casportpony in your threat. - I don't want to call her in here, she would have to read a lot of pages backwards in this threat and i don't know if she has the time to do that.

As for Junior herself, she shows all the signs of failure to thrive to me. And i don't have a recipe at hand to make sure she will pull through this.
She needs to eat and drink. Most important drink! Ducks dehydrate faster than we humons.
What about giving her a bath in a larger container and while bathing offer her some treats in the water. That's how i make sure that my broody ducks drink enough. At the moment we are at 35° (95F) with a humidity of just 25%. The air is literally sucking the moisture out of everything.
Does junior poop? And if yes, how does her poop looks like, maybe you can enjoy us with a -pic? Don't worry, we're all have seen disgusting broody poops, some of us have even experienced them…

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

We went to the vet and were received by a vet lady who has ducks herself. Could not get any better.

She says the weird looking feathers and the general "preowned" look are simply representative of the fact that Junior is in a molt. What I took to be sad remains of feathers are actually perfectly good starts of new feathers, as you say @Miss Lydia .

No internal or external parasites were found (visual, sticky tape, microscope). This is really great.

The eye thing seems to be an infection and we got an antibiotic for it, to be delivered every 12 hours orally.

The vet says there's a good chance that once the infection clears up and the new feathers are done, it will simply be a case of a duck with a bad previous environment- undernourished, underdeveloped, could pull out of that in its new home and improved conditions.

We were also advised to try and add dog food to the diet as we don't have cats but do have a young dog who switched away from super strong puppy food awhile ago.

The vet did not made a culture? - I thought about that she (the duck!) may have an infection in her digestive system, but she is receiving antibiotics orally anyways. Just out of curiosity, what did the vet charged you?
Ducks rarely have parasites of any kind, their body temperature is too high.
I don't know about food for puppys, with the cat-food i look out for the variants wich have more than 20% protein in the recipe. Ducks need protein, especially when they are growing feathers, which in fact are pure protein. My girls usually stop laying during their molt. And molting can be really hard on ducks - and yeah, funny to watch for us humons!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

My flock loves dog food they get it every day along with their mealworms for a treat. just make sure the kibble is small so she can swallow it okay. I like your vet she sounds like what we need here. We have to travel far distances to see a vet who knows poultry.

The size of the pieces is one of the reasons why i stuck with cat-food, i'm afraid that the more vicious eaters, like Blanca may choke on dog-food.
The other reason is that dog-food usually has less than 20% of protein.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Greetings! The small heat wave we had finally broke, but now we have high winds. That's alright, it should keep the mosquitoes at bay!

Supercow, glad to hear the little one saw someone competent! Hopefully she starts doing better from now on!

Lucky you! - Here it is unbearable outside: 35° and 25 humidity. I had to abort my work outside and lay down due to signs of dehydration. I drank plain water, that is something i never do! Water should only be used to wash the dishes and thin the shine…

 

[Miss Lydia]

I did not know Jr was broody?

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

They do! Some of the best out there, doesn't even need composting!

Like with the ducks! - If a duck poops in the grass, you get a green spot, if chickens poop the grass will die before growing back.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

If you really want the air flow, you could always jury-rig something with a computer fan?

I know, but as said i also like the idea of transferring the warmth through contact instead of convection. When the time comes, i might have to just try it out…

 

[Miss Lydia]

The size of the pieces is one of the reasons why i stuck with cat-food, i'm afraid that the more vicious eaters, like Blanca may choke on dog-food.
The other reason is that dog-food usually has less than 20% of protein.

The dog food I buy is for small dogs I have a mini dachshund so it's perfect for my flock