I was pretty surprised to see that I've got some early birds in my incubator. This is my first time hatching eggs but from everything I've read it takes around 28 days for duck eggs to hatch. On days one through twenty-five you keep the temperature at 37.5 degrees Celsius and I've keep the humidity around 60%. On days 26 through 28 you move the eggs out of their holding trays and up the humidity over 70% so the egg shells don't stick to the ducklings as they hatch.
It's The Early Bird!
We just hit day #26 around 20 minutes ago and I went to candle the eggs one last time and move the eggs out of their trays. You do this because the babies don't need to hatch in an egg tray and will need space to move around once out of the egg. I opened the lid to the incubator and heard peeping! I found one egg with a little hole and feathers popping out. Looking around I found four eggs total starting to hatch!
I don't know how long it'll take them to finish hatching but I'm watching them closely. I put some cheese cloth down in the bottom of the tray for the eggs to hatch on to keep things clean. The incubator has two levels and I've got two dozen eggs underneath on the bottom incubating. They are on day 15 so it'll be a while for them still. The cheese cloth will help keep things clean to prevent bacteria from spreading around the incubator.
Two more breaking through!
Lots of eggs to hatch.
I still need to get my brooder ready to move the new ducklings into once they are born and dry. It looks like I'll be up late working on that. I got some big plastic totes at Dollar General. I'm going to cut a huge hole in their lids and attach fencing to it. I need an open lid for the heat lamp but also need fencing to keep my curious toddler out.
It's been such a fascinating process to see life being created. Incubating eggs really is a unique experience. I don't know how many will make it to the end but I'm hoping all of them do. I started off with 17 eggs in the first batch and 14 made it to day 26.
I lost 5 out of batch #2 which are four days behind batch #1. I don't know what happened there but it's sad. I've got the dead eggs set aside to bury in my garden. The lost lives with decompose and help new life to grow.
Wow.... It sounds like you're going to have quite the duck population, when those hatch! What kinds of duks are these? It would be fun to watch them hatch.
It is really fun to watch. I'll probably be up late watching. I don't know how many I'm going to keep. I'm mainly learning to hatch for extra income. Purebred black swedish I can sell for $8 each. I put an ad on craigslist a few weeks ago so at least four of them are already sold.
I'm thinking they are all black swedish but there might be some black swedish/khaki campbell mixed. Reese doesn't give me many eggs so it'll be interesting to see if I get a rare brown khaki mixed in there. I'd like to keep one or two if I do. Knowing me I'll fall in love with them all and my husband will be putting up with 40 ducks in the back yard lol.
Seriously cool!! I'm so glad that you have some hatching!
I'm looking forward to the pictures tomorrow!!
I will be a wreck - baby animals stresses me and will be so afraid something happens to them. I wish you luck and may they all be healthy.
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