Hi,
I’m doing my 2nd duck incubation in my incubator and my first one went very well, but this one is starting to look like it will be really bad.
I started with 42 eggs. It’s now day 9, and 11 have died. Some died in the first 4 days and developed blood rings. Others had died by day 7, and a couple more died between day 7 & 9. A few more are still moving slightly but it looks like the veins are disappearing. It’s very discouraging!
I’ve read all sorts of things can cause early embryo death. But it’s strange that I’m having much higher death rate than the last time which was just 2 months ago!
Could it be the bleach I used to clean the incubator? Could it be killing the embryos? I cleaned it twice: once after the last hatch and again a few days before putting the eggs in the incubator. Maybe I didn’t rinse it well enough?
I started with 42 eggs from my flock. The parents are all 1-3 years old. I feed them layer crumble and they have 24/7 pasture. This is unchanged from previous incubation.
My incubator is a forced air incubator with auto turner every 90 minutes.
The only major differences from the previous hatch:
1: I’m using the dry incubation method. Without adding water, my humidity has been 36-42%. Air cells looked great at day 7. Last time my humidity kept going to high and I switched to dry incubation for the last 2 weeks so this time I decided to try dry from the beginning.
2: I didn’t wash the eggs at all but I chose as clean eggs as possible. Last time I gently cleaned any slightly dirty egg with warm water.
At this point I am afraid they will all die.
I’ve already switched my ducks to Purina duck pellets in case the diet is a problem, but they were eating crumble last incubation.. so that’s probably not it.
Anyway, I know it’s probably impossible to guess what’s wrong but thanks for reading!
I’m doing my 2nd duck incubation in my incubator and my first one went very well, but this one is starting to look like it will be really bad.
I started with 42 eggs. It’s now day 9, and 11 have died. Some died in the first 4 days and developed blood rings. Others had died by day 7, and a couple more died between day 7 & 9. A few more are still moving slightly but it looks like the veins are disappearing. It’s very discouraging!
I’ve read all sorts of things can cause early embryo death. But it’s strange that I’m having much higher death rate than the last time which was just 2 months ago!
Could it be the bleach I used to clean the incubator? Could it be killing the embryos? I cleaned it twice: once after the last hatch and again a few days before putting the eggs in the incubator. Maybe I didn’t rinse it well enough?
I started with 42 eggs from my flock. The parents are all 1-3 years old. I feed them layer crumble and they have 24/7 pasture. This is unchanged from previous incubation.
My incubator is a forced air incubator with auto turner every 90 minutes.
The only major differences from the previous hatch:
1: I’m using the dry incubation method. Without adding water, my humidity has been 36-42%. Air cells looked great at day 7. Last time my humidity kept going to high and I switched to dry incubation for the last 2 weeks so this time I decided to try dry from the beginning.
2: I didn’t wash the eggs at all but I chose as clean eggs as possible. Last time I gently cleaned any slightly dirty egg with warm water.
At this point I am afraid they will all die.
I’ve already switched my ducks to Purina duck pellets in case the diet is a problem, but they were eating crumble last incubation.. so that’s probably not it.
Anyway, I know it’s probably impossible to guess what’s wrong but thanks for reading!