I have both chicken eggs and duck eggs in the hova bator. Chicken eggs go into lockdown this Thursday! I'm so excited as most of them appear good, except the ones I can't see into, shmeh. And the duck eggs are doing great too! Problem is I set all the eggs on the same day... So according to the instruction booklet, this Thursday or Friday I fill up both of the water troughs. Alrighty. Will that harm the ducks any? Also when is lockdown for ducks? Day 25? Cuz then they'll have the extra humidity before hatching time too. I'm hopefully hatching fawn and white crested runners! I can't wait! The rouens lay greenish blue eggs and I think the 5 duck eggs are brown.. Crested rouens are fine too.
Ducks (except Muscovies) typically hatch at 28 days. I'm just now incubating my first duck eggs, too. There's a thread here in the duck section called "Thread formally known as Hatch Day is today" or something like that. Pretty much everyone on there is hatching waterfowl and they can answer your questions. Also, if you click on the sticky section at the top of the duck or goose section, there is a great incubating and hatching guide written by Pete55.
Hey, feel welcome to join us in the Hatch Day thread. You know the one that's a million pages long? I did the same thing you did. My chicks hatched out Saturday and the ducks just went to lockdown. I candled and it looks like there are several beaks in air cells already! I don't know how it will effect the overall hatch. This is my first hatch ever and I really made it extra work by setting the chicken and duck eggs at the same time. You should have seen me try to figure out how to remove some of the rails from my turner so I could lay my chicken eggs down at lockdown. Four out of five chicks hatched successfully. I'm hoping for a good result from the ducks, but it seems like ducks have a harder time hatching than chickens. I'm hatching runners too!
With chickens- you dont need to raise the humidity as high as with ducks- so it shouldnt be too much of an issue. But you should check the size of the aircells once the chickens are done hatching- just to make sure they arent too small. Turning the eggs will be a greater issue for you though. It really is still very important to turn the ducks. Do you have an auto turner?? Some people will put the hatching eggs into a container so they can still have the turning mechanism on for eggs not ready to hatch yet.
