Help/advice: rescuing wood duck eggs

[cjtamejoy]

Hello there,

I've been searching for help online to figure out how to help some wood duck eggs and I noticed that there are people here who seem to have experience hatching duck eggs.

Here's the situation: we had a mother wood duck lay and incubate eggs in our screech owl box. A raccoon found the nest, flushed her out and ate several of the eggs. The hen seemed upset and would not go back in the box. Once we noticed she'd been out for a long time and was not going back in to incubate the remaining eggs, we removed them and placed them in our small incubator. We know the eggs are well-developed because one was broken open at the base of the tree and the dead chick inside was very well developed.

We have candled the six remaining eggs and each has a living, moving chick inside.

We have no idea how long until they would hatch since we don't know how many days they have been incubated.

Any advice or experience is appreciated! We have not done this before and since we know for certain they are alive and kicking right now it feels like a big responsibility to make sure they hatch safely. What should we be doing or avoiding to help that happen?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[guineapeeps]

Hello there,

I've been searching for help online to figure out how to help some wood duck eggs and I noticed that there are people here who seem to have experience hatching duck eggs.

Here's the situation: we had a mother wood duck lay and incubate eggs in our screech owl box. A raccoon found the nest, flushed her out and ate several of the eggs. The hen seemed upset and would not go back in the box. Once we noticed she'd been out for a long time and was not going back in to incubate the remaining eggs, we removed them and placed them in our small incubator. We know the eggs are well-developed because one was broken open at the base of the tree and the dead chick inside was very well developed.

We have candled the six remaining eggs and each has a living, moving chick inside.

We have no idea how long until they would hatch since we don't know how many days they have been incubated.

Any advice or experience is appreciated! We have not done this before and since we know for certain they are alive and kicking right now it feels like a big responsibility to make sure they hatch safely. What should we be doing or avoiding to help that happen?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

I have incubated eggs, but not duck eggs. The temp and humidity vary with what type of fowl your incubating, so looked it up to see what Is correct for ducks. Couldn’t find specifics for wood ducks, but you could follow other general specifications for other types of ducks. Rather than repeating what I found in the threads and articles that I read, I will just post links here for you to read. Post pics if they hatch...I’d love to see them! Good luck!

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/incubating-and-hatching-muscovy-eggs.63532/

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/incubating-wood-duck-eggs.862516/

(You might try messaging the experienced person @duckmanjim who gave suggestions on the second link specially about wood ducks or try the original poster of the thread @jtalking to see what their outcome was).