Hatching Call Ducks

[tnosidam]

Hello all, I have recently been incubating call ducks and I ran into a lot of problems during hatching. I got eight eggs off of eBay and they all arrived with no cracks but pretty wonky air cells. I let them sit large end up for 24 hours before incubating and 6 out of eight developed (one was infertile and one stopped developing after about day 2). I put them into lockdown on day 23 and they were all moving. Three ended up dying without internally or externally pipping. Two hatched with assistance on days 27 and 28 and are now doing fine. It is now day 32 and the third egg finally externally pipped yesterday but on the wrong end of the egg. I have not assisted much, just pulled some of the shell away from the hole to make sure he broke the membrane. I can see his beak and it seems like he’s still absorbing his yolk so I’m just leaving him be. Does anyone have any ideas as to why the three died and why this one is so late? Thank you in advance.

 

[johntfs]

You said the air cells were "wonky." Maybe they were wonky enough that the three suffocated? As for the late one, 28 days to hatching is pretty much an average. There's always going to be variances. Or you got a Muscovy egg by mistake or something. I understand that Muscovy usually take 35 days or so to hatch.

 

[CluckNDoodle]

Oh no! I'm sorry you had such a difficult hatch. There are a number of things that could have happened to affect your hatch rate. Waterfowl are more difficult to hatch in general in my opinion but shipping eggs adds a whole other dynamic to the hatching experience. From the sounds of it the package was handled really roughly, resulting in possibly detached or saddled air cells. I feel like I also see a higher occurrence of chicks/ducklings pipping on the wrong end and sticky chicks in shipped eggs. I'm not entirely sure why that is though.

As far as it hatching later, cold spots in the incubator can make for later hatches and it's actually not unusual for it to take 2-3 days for waterfowl to finish hatching.

The ducklings that didn't even internally pip I would lean toward them not being able to rotate properly to get in position to pip which again could be a number of things, but a couple I suspect would be either not able to rotate because of the wonky air cell, shrink wrapping or sticky chicks (too low or too high of humidity during incubation).

That's all speculation on my part without pictures or actively seeing your hatch but hopefully that may help you to figure it out. I hope the last ducky hatches successfully for you!

 

[Miss Lydia]

@Pyxis