This post covers several days in our incubated Muscovy eggs timeline. All of the eggs were from our own stock, and the ducklings are about a week and a half younger than Coraline’s babies. We’re binge-watching “duck TV” around here!
5/11: three ducklings had hatched when we checked this morning. Several other eggs showed external pips; one egg, Piper’s tiny green egg, had part of a tiny black foot sticking out of it. The duckling had externally pipped yesterday, but was making slow progress.
The duckling in the tiny egg was struggling mightily to escape. We could see the tip of a foot poking out and the bill, as well, from time to time. The membrane was browning, indicating that it was drying out, despite the higher humidity in the incubator. In addition, the first hatchling kept going back and pulling on the imprisoned duckling’s toes. The unhatched duckling needed some help. Continue reading “Incubator Duckling Hatch Update #2 – Multiple Days”
We had another night of severe storms, with forecasted winds of up to 55 mph. After the chicken tractor went aloft in the last windstorm, we modified it by shortening the tarp providing shade and cover on top; the result was that less than a quarter of it remained covered. There’s no way that thing could take off again.
Yesterday was the 20th day of incubation for the Muscovy eggs in our incubator. We’ve been turning them 3 times a day by hand (even though the incubator has an autoturner), manually cooling once a day (even though the machine has an autocooling feature customizable for waterfowl), and misting with water daily. Are you wondering why we would choose the manual route when the incubator could do everything except the misting for us?
Incubated eggs: batch #3 hatching is complete, with just one late hatcher left in the incubator. The chick in the photo was an unassisted hatch, but we noticed that one leg splayed out a bit, so we taped his/her legs together with a piece of bandage to help the leg straighten out. The late hatcher clearly needed some assistance, but we wanted to provide every opportunity for the chick to emerge on his or her own. When we did intervene, we began by partly opening the egg (last night) to see if s/he could kick out; when we checked this morning, s/he was still in the same position in the partial shell. 
Yesterday, we had high winds here, which happen from time to time. What we didn’t expect was for the winds to be so strong, they would actually lift the chicken tractor and blow it down the hill. With six 7 week old chicks in it.