What settings for lockdown?

[Little Cute Lily]

I'm hatching some Khaki Campbell duck eggs and I know they are supposed to go on lockdown the 25th day and hatch around the 28th day. I know to keep the humidity higher around 65%, but I've seen different websites recommend different temperatures and some don't even mention changing the temperature at all, only to up the humidity and take them off the turner. Currently, my incubator is running at 38 Celsius (100.4 Fahrenheit). Some websites say to turn it down to 37.5 Celsius/99.5 Fahrenheit and others say to turn it down to 36.1 Celsius/97 Fahrenheit. Just wanted to get some clarification on the best temperature for lockdown, thanks!
Also, my incubator is on the smaller side in case that changes anything. It's a 12 egg incubator but there are only 4 eggs in it.

 

[Araucana Nest]

The humidity is raised but I don’t change temperature for lockdown. Usually I wait until I see the first pip to stop the auto turner. If you are unable to observe often, stop the auto turn two days before they are expected to hatch.

 

[AngeJD]

Sorry to piggyback, I've got 4 call duck eggs in my bator right now and I set the temp at 37.5C according to what I read online. Is this too low? I was going to lower to 37.2C for lockdown and am now wondering if since my temp is 0.5C lower than yours that I should wait another day or two before locking down. I'm on day 17 and was planning on locking down at day 24.

 

[Little Cute Lily]

Sorry to piggyback, I've got 4 call duck eggs in my bator right now and I set the temp at 37.5C according to what I read online. Is this too low? I was going to lower to 37.2C for lockdown and am now wondering if since my temp is 0.5C lower than yours that I should wait another day or two before locking down. I'm on day 17 and was planning on locking down at day 24.

My 4 duck eggs all hatched with one needing assistance. 37.5C is good and more recommended. The reason why mine was 38C is A) It was my first time hatching and that's what the incubator default was, but i lowered it to 37.3C during lockdown/hatching.
And B) My incubator is a cheap $40 still air incubator which means there's not a fancy fan keeping the temperature constant all throughout. The middle of my incubator was usually at 38C and the ends of my incubator were closer to 37.5C. The one egg that needed lots of help hatching was at the end of my incubator and also seemed to be a day behind. This actually lined up with what I read. Basically, a higher temperature will cause an early hatch and lower temperatures will cause a late hatch. 3 of my eggs hatched at around 4am on the 28th day. I first incubated them at 12pm (noon) so they technically hatched about half a day early. (27.5 days) The 4th egg was again near the end of my incubator where it was 0.5C colder. The duck egg was shrink wrapped so I had to wet the membrane every half an hour and break the shell slowly. The poor little duckling was rocking its egg like crazy but never made an external pip, meanwhile it's siblings had already zipped and hatched. So I knew I had to help it. The yolk was 90% absorbed when it finally came out the egg, some slight bleeding too. This duckling wasn't fully ready to hatch, maybe half a day to a day behind, but I guess hearing it's siblings hatch made it want to come out. It took a lot of love, patience, and care, but I'm happy to say it is now strong and healthy like it's siblings who didn't need help hatching. Moral of the story, as long as you're in the range of 99.5-100.5F (37.5C-38C) your duck eggs will be okay! And it's perfectly fine to lower the temperature to 37.0C during the last day of lockdown/hatch day. Mine were khaki campbell eggs, I do know though that call ducks are smaller with shorter beaks and have the most trouble externally pipping due to their short beaks. If you need help with helping them get out the shell, feel free to message me!

 

[AngeJD]

My 4 duck eggs all hatched with one needing assistance. 37.5C is good and more recommended. The reason why mine was 38C is A) It was my first time hatching and that's what the incubator default was, but i lowered it to 37.3C during lockdown/hatching.
And B) My incubator is a cheap $40 still air incubator which means there's not a fancy fan keeping the temperature constant all throughout. The middle of my incubator was usually at 38C and the ends of my incubator were closer to 37.5C. The one egg that needed lots of help hatching was at the end of my incubator and also seemed to be a day behind. This actually lined up with what I read. Basically, a higher temperature will cause an early hatch and lower temperatures will cause a late hatch. 3 of my eggs hatched at around 4am on the 28th day. I first incubated them at 12pm (noon) so they technically hatched about half a day early. (27.5 days) The 4th egg was again near the end of my incubator where it was 0.5C colder. The duck egg was shrink wrapped so I had to wet the membrane every half an hour and break the shell slowly. The poor little duckling was rocking its egg like crazy but never made an external pip, meanwhile it's siblings had already zipped and hatched. So I knew I had to help it. The yolk was 90% absorbed when it finally came out the egg, some slight bleeding too. This duckling wasn't fully ready to hatch, maybe half a day to a day behind, but I guess hearing it's siblings hatch made it want to come out. It took a lot of love, patience, and care, but I'm happy to say it is now strong and healthy like it's siblings who didn't need help hatching. Moral of the story, as long as you're in the range of 99.5-100.5F (37.5C-38C) your duck eggs will be okay! And it's perfectly fine to lower the temperature to 37.0C during the last day of lockdown/hatch day. Mine were khaki campbell eggs, I do know though that call ducks are smaller with shorter beaks and have the most trouble externally pipping due to their short beaks. If you need help with helping them get out the shell, feel free to message me!

Thank you so much for your reply! This is my first time hatching, and I've been very nervous. I have a small Magicfly incubator, and it's been keeping temps at 37.5 consistently. I have a thermometer and 2 hygrometers in there, and it's been consistently 37.5-37.7 for temp (so the incubator thermometer is pretty accurate) and even running dry the humidity is around 45%, probably from the daily cooling/misting I'd been doing since day 10. I set on March 29 early in the morning, so I guess I'm on day 19 right now. I was told to candle starting around now and once I see an internal pip, that I should go into lockdown, but no later than day 23, which I guess would put me at April 21 for lockdown. I have 2 more eggs in the basement cellar that I'm holding, but my hen is only laying about an egg or two a week (first year laying, and I'm impressed I got 16 out of her so far!). Have a hova bator still air coming on Monday which I plan on using for lockdown/hatch, so I can set my other eggs. I was planning on putting a small safety hole once they internally pipped - or is that something you do after no progress has been made? Sorry so many questions!

 

[Little Cute Lily]

Thank you so much for your reply! This is my first time hatching, and I've been very nervous. I have a small Magicfly incubator, and it's been keeping temps at 37.5 consistently. I have a thermometer and 2 hygrometers in there, and it's been consistently 37.5-37.7 for temp (so the incubator thermometer is pretty accurate) and even running dry the humidity is around 45%, probably from the daily cooling/misting I'd been doing since day 10. I set on March 29 early in the morning, so I guess I'm on day 19 right now. I was told to candle starting around now and once I see an internal pip, that I should go into lockdown, but no later than day 23, which I guess would put me at April 21 for lockdown. I have 2 more eggs in the basement cellar that I'm holding, but my hen is only laying about an egg or two a week (first year laying, and I'm impressed I got 16 out of her so far!). Have a hova bator still air coming on Monday which I plan on using for lockdown/hatch, so I can set my other eggs. I was planning on putting a small safety hole once they internally pipped - or is that something you do after no progress has been made? Sorry so many questions!

Feel free to ask as many questions as you like! For me, I took them off the turner day 24 and then went into lockdown day 25. My incubator came with a small LED flashlight but by day 23 all I could really see was black and in one of the eggs I saw slight movement. All 4 eggs were alive of course but I just didn't have a powerful flashlight so I stopped candling on day 23. Prior to day 23, I pretty much candled once every other day and towards the end once every other two days. I looked up what day do ducklings internally pip and it's usually on the 26/27th day. From there they have 18 hours of air to externally pip. I had no idea when mine internally pipped as I couldn't check with a powerful flashlight, but on day 27 in the afternoon 3 out of the 4 eggs externally pipped. The one egg that didn't externally pip yet was wiggling like crazy, and was the only egg that was wiggling. In the night time I could hear chirping coming from the eggs. Finally from 2am-5am (day 28) all 3 eggs had hatched. The fourth egg still no external pip so at 2 am I made a safety hole. I used a clean new flat end screw and very slowly with very little pressure made the safety hole. I could see it's little beak and felt much better knowing it could breathe. 10 hours later and lots of help, the fourth duckling was finally hatched. All in all, only make safety holes if no progress has been made. Since I had 3 ducklings already hatched, and the fourth hadn't externally pipped, I knew I had to intervene. Most likely the majority of your ducklings will hatch with no problems. Heck, one of my ducklings externally pipped at 3pm and didn't hatch until 2 am, so it took that duckling 11 hours from external pip to out of the shell. Meanwhile, one duck egg had pipped at 9pm, 6 hours later from the first egg that externally pipped, and yet it hatched by 1:20 am, so it only took 4 hours from external pip to hatch. As you can see, the time varied. One egg took 11 hours to hatch, and one egg pipped and zipped and hatched in 4 hours. Rule of thumb, by day 28 there should be an external pip. So day 27 just wait and be patient, then day 28 if there's still nothing, make the safety hole.

 

[Little Cute Lily]

Thank you so much for your reply! This is my first time hatching, and I've been very nervous. I have a small Magicfly incubator, and it's been keeping temps at 37.5 consistently. I have a thermometer and 2 hygrometers in there, and it's been consistently 37.5-37.7 for temp (so the incubator thermometer is pretty accurate) and even running dry the humidity is around 45%, probably from the daily cooling/misting I'd been doing since day 10. I set on March 29 early in the morning, so I guess I'm on day 19 right now. I was told to candle starting around now and once I see an internal pip, that I should go into lockdown, but no later than day 23, which I guess would put me at April 21 for lockdown. I have 2 more eggs in the basement cellar that I'm holding, but my hen is only laying about an egg or two a week (first year laying, and I'm impressed I got 16 out of her so far!). Have a hova bator still air coming on Monday which I plan on using for lockdown/hatch, so I can set my other eggs. I was planning on putting a small safety hole once they internally pipped - or is that something you do after no progress has been made? Sorry so many questions!

 

[AngeJD]

Feel free to ask as many questions as you like! For me, I took them off the turner day 24 and then went into lockdown day 25. My incubator came with a small LED flashlight but by day 23 all I could really see was black and in one of the eggs I saw slight movement. All 4 eggs were alive of course but I just didn't have a powerful flashlight so I stopped candling on day 23. Prior to day 23, I pretty much candled once every other day and towards the end once every other two days. I looked up what day do ducklings internally pip and it's usually on the 26/27th day. From there they have 18 hours of air to externally pip. I had no idea when mine internally pipped as I couldn't check with a powerful flashlight, but on day 27 in the afternoon 3 out of the 4 eggs externally pipped. The one egg that didn't externally pip yet was wiggling like crazy, and was the only egg that was wiggling. In the night time I could hear chirping coming from the eggs. Finally from 2am-5am (day 28) all 3 eggs had hatched. The fourth egg still no external pip so at 2 am I made a safety hole. I used a clean new flat end screw and very slowly with very little pressure made the safety hole. I could see it's little beak and felt much better knowing it could breathe. 10 hours later and lots of help, the fourth duckling was finally hatched. All in all, only make safety holes if no progress has been made. Since I had 3 ducklings already hatched, and the fourth hadn't externally pipped, I knew I had to intervene. Most likely the majority of your ducklings will hatch with no problems. Heck, one of my ducklings externally pipped at 3pm and didn't hatch until 2 am, so it took that duckling 11 hours from external pip to out of the shell. Meanwhile, one duck egg had pipped at 9pm, 6 hours later from the first egg that externally pipped, and yet it hatched by 1:20 am, so it only took 4 hours from external pip to hatch. As you can see, the time varied. One egg took 11 hours to hatch, and one egg pipped and zipped and hatched in 4 hours. Rule of thumb, by day 28 there should be an external pip. So day 27 just wait and be patient, then day 28 if there's still nothing, make the safety hole.

Thank you! Since these are call ducks, incubation is 26 days, so I'll just minus 2 days from yours. I'm on day 21 today and I did candle earlier, on 2 of them they're almost all dark so can't see much, but the air sac got big and dipped almost over night, and I can see some sort of shadow movement where the air sac is so I'm thinking those 2 may internally pip sooner. The other 2 I can still see through a little bit and see veins. Don't know why the difference, since I was really good about rotating outside/in to make sure there weren't cold spots. But the 2 that are closer were bigger, so maybe that had something to do with it? I'm going to get some pics to post.

 

[Crazy Duck Lover]

I just finished a hatch. I raise my humidity to around 70-75% depending on how my pips look. I put the temp to 99* instead of 99.5*. I find the only thing lowering the temp does is slow them down! Thanks to some of the hatching experts on here.. i learned all this info Best of luck!

 

[AngeJD]

So these are the 4. On the 2 larger eggs the air sac definitely a lot bigger, and I think I see a bill in one of them. The 2 smaller eggs aren't quite as dark, and I can still see veins, so still lock them all down at same time? I'm on day 21 so guess 2 days until lockdown? Bator is at 37.5C and humidity around 45% (running dry except for misting, we have a whole house humidifier and it's been raining lots). Do they look on track? Thanks!!!