After 38 days of incubation, the duck eggs failed to hatch. We candled and gently tapped on them last night to ensure there were no signs of life. Unfortunately, there weren’t – none had even pipped internally, and a couple looked as if they had begun to deteriorate inside the shell.
Muscovy eggs are rumored to be very difficult to hatch in an incubator (though there are some people who claim that they’ve hatched many batches of Muscovy eggs successfully in incubators). It’s tough to wait and hope for 5 weeks, just to have those hopes dashed at the finish line…but that’s how incubation sometimes goes.
The incubator won’t stay idle long. The teens will be ready to live outside full-time soon, freeing up brooder space, so we could hatch more chicks. Alternately, if we get some fertile duck eggs from our Muscovies soon, we may put those into the incubator and try again. Even better, the ducks could hatch their own!