It’s a dark and stormy day. Outside, there’s a thunderstorm going on with lightning and driving rain. Inside, in their incubator, the Muscovy eggs are hatching.
Four of the eggs have obvious external pips, and we can hear the ducklings peeping inside the shells. Duck eggs are hard and the membranes are tough, so these little guys have their work cut out for them.
Surprisingly, one of the pipped eggs is one of Piper’s that was added a couple of days after we set the initial group. It’s hatching earlier than expected, but still within the “normal” hatching window.
The last time we tried incubating Muscovy eggs, they seemed to develop but none pipped externally, so it’s a relief to see little bills working to break out of those shells. It may take a couple more days for all of the eggs to hatch, but it looks like we should see some long-awaited ducklings shortly!
We got a good look at Coraline’s ducklings this morning, and they are cute as can be. One of the quick photos we snapped before she got too huffy showed eight little ones. We also thought we spied one unhatched egg, which is still within the “normal” hatching timeframe – actually, it could conceivably even hatch within the next few days.
Coraline and the ducklings drank some water (we put a small chicken “fountain” waterer in there, too small for any of the ducklings to accidentally fall in), ate some food, and mom even took a couple of bites of the slightly out-of-control vegetation growing in the duck enclosure; we noticed that when she went for the greens, she positioned herself in front of the ducklings on the coop ramp so they couldn’t come out. They’ll be chowing down on greens and bugs in no time, too. 
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?