Is anyone here? I am slightly freaking out. I feel horrible. We have our first batch of Muscovy ducks by a mama who had a fine batch last year (at another farm). She laid on 17 eggs this year. One-by-one they were rotting. She would pull them out of the nest and take them down to the creek. On Day 34, expecting the rest to hatch the next day, I was outside working near her nest, and there was an egg-splosion. It was disgusting, stinky, and filled her nest and went all over the other eggs.
In a panic, I came to search the web for what to do. Most of the advice was leaning toward taking out the remaining eggs, cleaning them off, and creating a new nest. The kids and I did so very carefully and gently and placed the new nest within a close proximity of her old nest. We waited with baited breath until finally a few hours later she climbed on - for all of 5 minutes! She jumped up like she had been bittten in the behind and came out to bed down somewhere else. We decided to bring the eggs in under a heat lamp, since that's all we had.
I kept checking on them, and as the temperature was fluctuating too much I decided to make a new nest in the dog's unused kennel and shut her in with them. We did that for several hours, but she refused to sit on them, rolled them out of the nest I had made and sat beside them. We finally let her out in the evening for water, etc. I was getting too upset trying to keep them perfect, so I just left them overnight anyway, hoping she would go back.
She didn't, and this morning they were very cool. We were bracing ourselves to throw them out, but when we picked them up to examine them we felt little shudders in five of the six remaining eggs. Brought them inside again to bring their heat back up to about 100 degrees. Then, I insulated them in ankle socks and am carrying them around in a pouch near my torso. We candled them just a bit ago, and there is a huge air space in five of the six.
The sixth one looked watery, so we thought, Oh great, another rotten one! We took it outside, but to be safe [to make sure it wasn't about to hatch], we peeled back a tiny portion of the shell. It didn't smell rotten (Oh no!). We peeled back enough that we could see what was going on, and inside is a perfect egg sack (like a placenta), perfect blood vessels, a perfect baby Muscovy with little legs and toenails, and a huge yolk. I feel horrible. What if it could have survived?
I placed it all back in its shell very carefully and put it in a ziplock with a little air hole, and now it's under a makeshift incubator that my neighbor told me how to make. Is it possible for it to survive? I can't find good embryo identification pictures online to tell exactly how old it is. The only things I don't get is, if she started laying on her eggs and pulled out her feathers 36 days ago today, but laid eggs for two more days after that, the youngest chick would be 34 days old today. How could it possibly have that much yolk left at day 34?!
I don't see the pictures anymore from the original poster, but that's what I was hoping to see if anyone could send them to me. I may be able to better identify how old it is, and if it's already dead. Should I see a heartbeat or movement if it's alive?
