unexpected suprise!

[ducksliketoswim]

As I was out feeding the ducks this morning I noticed that hidden in the plants was a duck egg! My ducks have never laid before so naturally I was pretty excited. Over the past few days my male duck has been giving my female duck A LOT of attention and I believe there is a pretty good chance that the egg is fertile. I have never had success incubating an egg before and since the duck that laid it is a pekin, I think that I will be the one to hatch it. Is incubating an egg fairly easy? I own a small dome incubator that I got when I was about ten for a science project at school, but I was not successful in hatching and have given up trying to incubate eggs since then. Any advice on how to keep this little egg alive? When can I candle it to see if it is alive? and can I use just a normal flashlight to check? and whats the perfect temp for the incubator to be at? thanks!

 

[Amiga]

I am not a hatcher (yet, anyway), but until a more experienced person comes by, I wanted to welcome and congratulate you!

It seems I have read that the first few eggs may not be the easiest to hatch out, but let's see what others say.

Making sure the duck (female) has good nutrition should help the eggs, also.

Meanwhile, see a Duck Forum search turns up some details for you.

 

[EmAbTo48]

I would actually leave this egg if this is the first egg that you have found out of this pekin or any of your ducks. I am not sure if you are totally against eating duck eggs or cracking them open, but I always crack the first egg to be laid by any new duck to make sure fertlization is actually happening. If you have young males and females it may take a few trys to get the deed right

I would rather the duck lay up to 5 eggs on a regular basis so you don't come up with genetic issues and such you want her reproductive organs to be functioning well to produce healthy offspring!

But I guess you can always try to see what happens and stick it in their and candle it after 3 days of incubation you should see veins forming if it is a viable egg. Otherwise something is not right and I would remove it before you have a big smelly mess.

Good luck!

OH and I was going to say I have a very hard time candling with regular flashlight if you have an LED flashlight much much easier!

 

[ducksliketoswim]

first off I'd like to say thanks for welcoming me to BYC =] Its been fun

At first when I read that the first egg was to be left alone I was pretty bummed because I thought she would stop laying after she had it so I was pretty anxious to see if my duck would lay another egg by morning, and sure enough, she did! So im not as worried now that I see that she will be laying every day. How does waiting till the 5th egg prevent genetic issues? I think she will be laying an egg everday so In three more days I will have egg number 5!

 

[Amiga]

My understanding is that it takes a little time for the egg system to fully develop. Ducks may look full grown, but they take another while for their internal organs to mature. So it is possible that an egg can be formed and laid before the duck's body is "firing on all cylinders," so to speak.

Early on, there are pullet (tiny) eggs, or eggs missing yolks, and so forth. Each duck is different, so we cannot know. So it is just a conservative approach to wait for a while to be sure that the egg produced is one with a good chance of normal development and hatching.