We candled the Muscovy eggs last night and of the 7, saw 2 that concerned us. One was damaged – there was a tiny impact point and a crack that spanned about half the egg. Not good. Since we didn’t have any plain wax for sealing the crack, we painted it with nail polish. Sounds weird, but some people claim they’ve successfully hatched cracked eggs this way. Worth a try. Note: only “five free” polish was used (no Toluene, Dibutyl Phthalate, Formaldehyde, Formaldehyde Resin, or Camphor). Continue reading “Incubating Duck Eggs and Warmer Days”
Tag: Eggs
The Duck Eggs Arrived…Finally
The Muscovy eggs ordered last week were shipped by the seller on Monday by Priority Mail. Unfortunately, they were mysteriously delayed in transit and didn’t arrive at the local post office (and strangely, went to a different PO, rather than the one to which we’re assigned) until today. We’ve been watching the tracking carefully, so as soon as we saw that they had arrived at the local PO, we called and asked them to hold the package for pickup.
The package was in good shape, and the eggs were carefully wrapped, individually, first in paper towel, then bubble wrap, and placed in a box, which was placed in a bigger box and surrounded by paper to cushion the eggs. The eggs appear to all be unbroken.
Cleverness Runs In The Family
We’ve been trying to figure out which of the Muscovy ducks is laying, and we know Coraline is for certain. The other morning, we found 3 eggs in the duck coop. Based on history, we concluded that one was laid by Coraline, but who laid the other two was a mystery.
Without seeing who’d laid the eggs, we speculated that Phoebe (Ty’s girl) would likely be one of the layers, as would Pru. Piper is the fourth duck, and she has the brown head with little caruncling. She just seems a bit less mature than her sisters.
More About The Muscovies
Our Muscovy drake, Tiberius, is a handsome fellow. He has a crest on his head that he raises, and it looks like a pompadour (we joke that we should have called him “Elvis”). His caruncles are vibrant. He’s roughly twice the size of the ducks, and while he looks slow, he can really move when he’s motivated. His hissing and head-bobbing are charming. Continue reading “More About The Muscovies”
Rabbit Kits On The Way?
It’s cold out there today. Cold enough to numb your hands and face. It even snowed a little in the afternoon. It’s supposed to get into the single digits tonight, so we did the “cold weather routine”, including warm water for the chickens in their coop; deep straw in the ducks’ coop; warm water and extra hay for the rabbits outside.
Both of the NZ does are indoors tonight because tomorrow is (according to the calendar) kindling day…if they’re pregnant. There are promising signs, but these two would be first-time mothers, so may not know exactly what to do with the nest boxes we put in their kindling cages. They come from a line that has large litters – their litter had 11, and all survived, so we hope they’ll be as successful in raising their own kits. We’ll check on them tomorrow to see if there are any new arrivals.
Lockdown – Three Days To Hatch
It’s day 18 and the eggs in the incubator are now in “lockdown”. They’ve been taken off the autoturner and the humidity has been raised in preparation for hatching. It’s critical to keep the humidity high (65%+) until they hatch, so the incubator won’t be opened again until the chicks have hatched. Continue reading “Lockdown – Three Days To Hatch”