What are the chances my duck egg is a moulard? And other eggy insanity...

[New duck mommy 2021]

I see what looks like dark red blood near and below his external pip site. I think that means he hit a blood vessel and bled. I candled him again and still no movement. I'm going to let him be in the cooler until the morning and check one more time then. I just want to thank everyone for their help. My kids are sad. I am sad. Loving other beings can be so, so hard.

Can you show a picture of the blood area ?
I saw bruising their earlier and that’s normal when they miss the air cell as they hit a vein to pip out
Usually they do just fine as they eat the blood up
You should see some kind of movement
It’s not uncommon to move deep into the air cell though
But his foot could have caught a vein while doing so and caused a bleed out
I’m really praying this is not the case
You can set the wet sponges in little containers so it doesn’t get his egg wet

 

[Rysktal]

Aw, my dearest friend. Regardless of the outcome, you did an amazing job and gave your children an incredible experience.
Hatching eggs is a safe way to explore love, life & death.
With love,
K♡

 

[OneEggToRuleThemAll]

Hello everyone. I don't have good news, but I wanted to update this thread for those following. My sweet Bobby didn't make it. Before burying him this morning, I decided to open his egg and see what happened. The part of his body in his air cell (that I initially thought was his head) was actually the back of his neck where his head attached. His head and face were indeed still at the external pip site. It looked like he had a foot over his shoulder. I didn't see a lot of blood in the egg so I don't know what actually happened. I am sad because I saw a video of an assisted hatching where the baby duckling was malpositioned and the woman slowly and gently broke into the air cell and pulled just the head out, then wrapped the rest of the egg in damp paper towels, put the egg in a dixie cup, and put him back in the incubator to finish absorbing his yolk. Bobby had a BIG egg yolk, so I know he wasn't ready to hatch. I don't know if he suffocated or bled. I took a picture of him when I took him out of his shell this morning. He was so perfect and yellow, a pekin the color of sunshine and dandelions. The kids and I have been crying on and off all day. This has been rough! We buried him in the little box that our other ducklings arrived in the mail in. My older daughter carved his name in a piece of wood and my younger daughter scattered flowers all over his little gravesite. I wish I would have helped him, but I didn't really know how...and wasn't ready for that experience. Perhaps, if I ever hatch eggs again, I will know how to help if a similar situation ever occurs. This has been one heck of a learning experience. Grateful, sad, loving my ducklings, loving my kids. Life is precious!

 

[Miss Lydia]

I am so sorry. He looks so perfect. It is heartbreaking and most of us know exactly how you are feeling.
Thankfully you have your new little ones to help you with the grief you and your kids are feeling.
Thank you for sharing your experience with us.

 

[New duck mommy 2021]

Hello everyone. I don't have good news, but I wanted to update this thread for those following. My sweet Bobby didn't make it. Before burying him this morning, I decided to open his egg and see what happened. The part of his body in his air cell (that I initially thought was his head) was actually the back of his neck where his head attached. His head and face were indeed still at the external pip site. It looked like he had a foot over his shoulder. I didn't see a lot of blood in the egg so I don't know what actually happened. I am sad because I saw a video of an assisted hatching where the baby duckling was malpositioned and the woman slowly and gently broke into the air cell and pulled just the head out, then wrapped the rest of the egg in damp paper towels, put the egg in a dixie cup, and put him back in the incubator to finish absorbing his yolk. Bobby had a BIG egg yolk, so I know he wasn't ready to hatch. I don't know if he suffocated or bled. I took a picture of him when I took him out of his shell this morning. He was so perfect and yellow, a pekin the color of sunshine and dandelions. The kids and I have been crying on and off all day. This has been rough! We buried him in the little box that our other ducklings arrived in the mail in. My older daughter carved his name in a piece of wood and my younger daughter scattered flowers all over his little gravesite. I wish I would have helped him, but I didn't really know how...and wasn't ready for that experience. Perhaps, if I ever hatch eggs again, I will know how to help if a similar situation ever occurs. This has been one heck of a learning experience. Grateful, sad, loving my ducklings, loving my kids. Life is precious!

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So sorry for your loss
Baby was beautiful
We don’t always know why they pass when it’s hatch time
Honestly there is nothing you could have done differently
He had a pip and was able to get air
That’s all they need till they are ready to hatch
Assisting a baby that soon is much to risky as most don’t make it being pulled that early
Sometimes there are things wrong that we can’t see
Don’t be hard on yourself

 

[OneEggToRuleThemAll]

Thank you, @Miss Lydia and @New duck mommy 2021

 

[davez]

Wow. Amazing that he made it this far. Sorry you lost him after so much work and love. Rough starts tend to result in rough endings in my limited experience. The ones I didn't have just right at the beginning tend to hatch and pass or they don't hatch at all. I've not hatched a ton, but that seems to be a general rule for me. Probably 6 times I've hatched ducks. And for your sanity, don't name eggs. I've done it. I won't do it again.

 

[chickmama29h]

Is that your 4 ducklings from Metzer Farms I can hear in the background? What sort of ducklings are they? I love your story!

Good luck with Bobby. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

Hi everyone, I'm new here. To make a long (and slightly embarrassing) story short, I have this egg. It's a duck egg. Its name is Bobby. I never planned on getting ducks (but now we've got four ducklings arriving in the mail today from Metzer Farms)! But anyway, back to the egg. I brought it home on October 25th. I did not have an incubator, so after scouring the internet for "DIY egg incubator" info, I sort of made one with a cooler (and a lamp, a couple towels, and two mason jars full of water). I've been taking ridiculously good care of this egg, getting up 2-4 times every night to take its temp, turn and mist it, and talk to it and tell it I love it and to please hatch for the love of all things holy because my children will be so upset if it doesn't.

So. Now it's day 29 since bringing it home, but that's counting the day that I started incubating it, which was late in the afternoon, so isn't today technically day 28?

Well, I've been candling it. A lot. Probably more than most of you recommend. And he's still in there moving around. The air cell is not quite as big as I thought it would be...for example, it looks like day 24 in this candling picture. Which is super weird because here's the thing...for the first, um, three-ish weeks, I did not have any kind of cover on my plastic cooler incubator and no hygrometer (please don't judge, I was trying hard but learning from a variety of blogs--I didn't have my Storey's Guide to Raising Ducks at the time--I do now!), so although I was generally keeping eggshell temp between 97 and 101 (with a few lower dips and a few higher highs for a couple hours at a time), the humidity couldn't have been more than 50% or so (air conditioned house in NE Florida). So once I learned all about how gosh darn important consistent humidity is when incubating eggs, I took a piece of glass out of a long-ish picture frame and put it on top of the cooler (and vented two corners by turning the piece of glass at an angle--I am regularly shifting the glass to regulate the humidity and temp), and bought a little hygrometer from the pet store. So since Saturday, which was day 25 (but now I realize it might actually have been day 24 if I start counting the day AFTER I began incubating the egg), I put the egg on lockdown (no more turning, though I still mist regularly to regulate humidity) and humidity levels have been 70-80%.

Okay. That's a lot. And there's more. Thank you for reading this far. <3

So here we are. Day 29 or 28, and I (gently, without turning) candled as recently as 3:00 this morning. Bobby is still alive in there, but no shadowing that I can see, and no internal pipping. I have learned by this point that his hatch date may likely be delayed because temperature has not been constant throughout incubation, but shouldn't he have internally pipped by now? But if he hasn't internally pipped, there's nothing to be done anyway, right? I mean, I've watched videos and read threads about people who have helped call ducks internally pip, but uh, no way. In lots of those threads and videos, up to half the birds didn't make it! As a retired (human) midwife, I know how important it is to let him hatch by himself. I'm worried about shrink wrapping because of the inconsistent humidity levels, but...wouldn't that mean the air cell would be much bigger? WHY ISN'T HE HATCHING GAHHHHHHH!!

And here's the kicker. So Bobby the Egg came from a pond housing a flock of pekins (I counted one drake and four ducks) ANNNDDDDD one muscovy drake. The muscovy drake seems to have been transient, as he's no longer there. BUT. WHAT IS THE CHANCE THAT THIS EGG IS HALF MUSCOVY and could THAT be the reason his air cell isn't bigger and no internal pipping yet?? The pekins didn't seem to hang out with the muscovy drake...he was kind of doing his own thing on the other side of the pond. But he was there! And now he's gone! What if he went there just to breed and now my egg is half muscovy?!

I'm reaching here, aren't I. I'm super stressed out about this and am so TIRED of waking up so much during the night to do all the things that I could have avoided if I'd just a) left the egg on the sidewalk and b) ignored my husband and just bought that expensive-ass incubator at Tractor Supply.

Please someone tell me my egg might still hatch. <3

I read your story. I must know. What happened with Bobby?

 

[Slothinc]

I read your story. I must know. What happened with Bobby?

If you read through the thread, she tells what happened to Bobby. Even just reading the last 2 pages would give all the info!