Today is hatching day for my 6 duck eggs. Ive been reading posts on BYC for awhile. Im using a still air incubator. Locked them down the 25th day.

[Megg_1333]

So this is my first time hatching duck eggs. Today is hatching day for my 6 ducks. Unsure on breed because I have a cayuga male 2 buff males. 2 rouen female. 3 buff females. 2 pekin females. When I grabbed the eggs it was a pekin that was laying on them and she was broody for about a week and gave up so I ended up saving 6 eggs that she had under her. When I brought them in I candled them and they had heart beats. Everything is going great as of now. Have 4 that internally pipped. One out of the 4 was internally pipped for 26 hours so I put a small safety hole in the air sack and left them alone. But today still no external pip but moving around still and hearing peeping and some type of tapping. The other 5 I'm unsure if they internally pipped or not yet because I'm trying to not open the incubator as much. But they are all still moving like crazy. Advice please? Should I check the one I put a safety hole in yet? And should I check the other ones for internal pips?
Humidty is 70 to 75%. Temp is 98.5 to 99.00

 

[quackingdom]

In my experience, if you make a safety hole, they stop feeling the need to externally pip and just wait until they're ready to hatch. So it's probably all right.

Personally, I would take a look and check if the others have internally pipped, but that's just me. I'm pretty comfortable with opening the incubator during lockdown since we often have super high humidity where I live and I don't have problems with the humidity dropping when I open it.

If you do open it, be sure to mist the eggs/incubator to reduce the chance of a humidity drop. But there's not any real need to.

 

[Megg_1333]

In my experience, if you make a safety hole, they stop feeling the need to externally pip and just wait until they're ready to hatch. So it's probably all right.

Personally, I would take a look and check if the others have internally pipped, but that's just me. I'm pretty comfortable with opening the incubator during lockdown since we often have super high humidity where I live and I don't have problems with the humidity dropping when I open it.

If you do open it, be sure to mist the eggs/incubator to reduce the chance of a humidity drop. But there's not any real need to.

Thank you for the reply! Yeah I did make safety holes in the rest and they still making noise and moving. And I guess externally pipped where I poked a safety hole cause in 3 eggs I see little beaks.

 

[Megg_1333]

In my experience, if you make a safety hole, they stop feeling the need to externally pip and just wait until they're ready to hatch. So it's probably all right.

Personally, I would take a look and check if the others have internally pipped, but that's just me. I'm pretty comfortable with opening the incubator during lockdown since we often have super high humidity where I live and I don't have problems with the humidity dropping when I open it.

If you do open it, be sure to mist the eggs/incubator to reduce the chance of a humidity drop. But there's not any real need to.