Debbie and I have raised ducks for nearly 15 years between our farm in north Florida and here in Terlingua, but we have NEVER successfully hatched many duck eggs until last year. Either the eggs were infertile, died along the way, or started to pip, then died. That scenario is the most heart-wrenching as there is a fully developed chick just a millimeter away from you and it dies!
Even our "successes" in the last year, have come from a 90% mortality rate (combined incubation, hatching & early days). This is hardly a success!
Still, we love our ducks, Muscovys most of all and we want to be successful at hatching them, so we can in time, have delicious Muscovy meat to eat. Nine out of ten eggs dying is not a ratio we can do this with!
We buy our ducks from Country Hatchery( http://www.countryhatchery.net), owned by Dr. Dennis Smith, now mostly retired having his son take over. Dr. Smith is a highly respected authority on Muscovy Ducks and has written an acclaimed article: "The Muscovy Duck" about them and their care.
So at the risk of being called a "duck killer", I wrote him today asking for help. In this article, I will detail our problems and his solution, a simple one.
What seems to happen with our eggs is twofold, one problem is that most Muscovy eggs have been infertile and there is not much you can do about that, except give the parents time to mature and/or change their feed. The other problem is the one that had us perplexed: the eggs would go full term, begin to pip, then stop and die. even helping the ducklings out of the shell, did not help any, they died. In fact, only one I helped out of its shell ever lived. The ones that died on the way out, had the internal membranes dry to their feathers after pipping. The chicks could not turn in the shell.
I bought a very nice, high tech incubator that keeps the temperature rock solid, automatically turns the eggs and has a circulation fan so the issues are not caused by the incubator directly.
Dr. Smith found the cause right away; HUMIDITY!
We live in the desert and the incubator cannot create more than about 80% humidity. Most of the time and especially with the other hatches, it as running around 45-50%. This is far too low for hatching ducklings. It needs to be at least 80%. Dr. Smith suggested having a spray bottle with warm water in it and spray the hatching eggs several times a day. There is one row in the incubator that has no eggs in it from me removing the infertile or dead eggs. I soaked some old (clean) socks in water and placed these in this row. As I am writing this, the humidity is 79%.
There are ten, fertile chicken eggs in there with the Muscovy eggs. I tried to time them to hatch on the same day as the ducks, but they are pipping right now, two days ahead of the ducks. But this will give me an opportunity to watch how the increased humidity works on the chickens. We have had some issues with the chicken eggs as well, though not at all like the ducks!
The next two days are busy, of course, with my having to go out tomorrow and deliver eggs and sausage to our customers and Saturday I will be gone most of the day picking up building supplies. Debbie will have to wet the socks and spray the eggs. But Sunday is "D-Day" for the Muscovys and I will be here all day.
Hopefully, I will have some new chicks to photograph and post here, but for all you that are hoping to hatch eggs in an incubator, remember that humidity is equally as important as temperature, particularly during the hatch!
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