The circle of life continues

It has been a long time since I posted on here. We just went threw a long and strange Winter here in Wisconsin. Not getting snow until late in the season and continuing to get heavy snow into late March. We've had fantastic sunny days recently so I'm hopefully optimistic that our Spring has finally begun.

Unfortunately I did lose a few ducks threw the Winter. I lost one to an ice storm and then lost 2 to a predator. That's all a part of life but I still took it hard. So I enter Spring with 5 hens and 1 drake.  Kay, Korie, Missy, Jessica, Christine and my drake is Phil. Yes, I truly enjoy Duck Dynasty and that's how my flock got their names. 

My ducks decided to surprise one day and give me 2 eggs. I was floored! It must have been a good for all of my birds because my young chickens decided to start laying the exact same day. I was very happy! It was tough going threw the winter with everyone eating like horses and not giving me any eggs to show for it. Here were the first eggs of the season. The one on the far left and in the middle are my ducks eggs and the one on the far right in a chicken egg. All are first eggs for my young ones.

Of my 5 duck hens I have got 4 laying, 2 with regularity. So every morning I collect the eggs, soak the crude off of them, let them dry, label them with a pen and put them in the incubator. Now I never thought any would be fertile, at least not until the Fall or next year. Well, I've been collecting eggs since March 14th and last night I decided to candle some of them out of curiousity. I was totally floored when some were fertile! I actually candled one and the embryo was moving!! We will definitely be welcoming in some new ducklings in a few weeks. I'm so excited! I raised their parents from eggs and now I get to do it all over. It's a very rewarding job.

Below is a picture of my incubator this morning. Some of the eggs were dirty because I was doing an experiment with cleaning some and leaving the original crude on others. It was a very short lived experiment and I'm back to cleaning off the eggs :)

I candle them and throw out the duds as we go. They say fertility can be checked at about a week in the incubator but I've been candling eggs at only a couple days old with good results. It's important to weed the duds out so you don't get rotten eggs blowing up in the incubator. Yuck! I do have a second incubator in case it's needed. My objective is to sell enough of the young that it pays for their parents feed for a little while. It helps when they can pay for themselves and make up for our tough winter. I'll try to get some pics of the fertile eggs but no guaranties. I get super nervous that I'll drop one :)

Thanks to everyone that is still reading my blog. This is a fabulous outlet for me to share my enjoyment and excitement. It's the little things that make me happy :)

The hatch!!!!

I wanted to wait until the hatch was all done before posting the hatching pictures. It truly was an amazing experience!

I really hustled after I noticed that several of my eggs had already pipped a little early. Thankfully Francie, the lady I got the duck eggs from, let me know that ducklings like to pip and then wait 24 hours before working on hatching. Sure enough I woke up the next morning and it looked like all the pipped ducklings had taking a nice nap in preparation for the hatch.
The first duckling hatched at 3pm on Thursday. He ended up being a very dark Blue and cute as can be!

They're born very wet and need to stay in the incubator until they've dried and fluffed up. Too early out of the incubator and they can catch a draft and too late out and they can get really sticky. Hatching is tough business so they usually take a nap after making decent progress. IE the picture directly above where the duckling has fallen asleep on the thermometer.
It's hard because they aren't very good at walking at first so they stumble and bump into all of the eggs. At first I was concerned but then I noticed that the commotion the hatched duckling was causing actually helped encourage the other ducklings to hatch. He'd stumble around and chirp a lot and all of a sudden I'd have several ducklings chirping and many of the eggs would be rocking. It was pretty cool!

It was tough being patient and not getting involved or helping them out of their shells. I've read that ducklings that have been helped out of their shell have shown to be weaker as adults as well. I didn't want to risk it so I let the ducklings go at their own pace. If you do help you have to be careful because it's very easy to injure the unhatched duckling. No matter how gentle you are sometimes they're taking longer to hatch because they're just not ready yet.
Here is an example of an already hatched duckling stimulating an unhatched duckling.

I did end up having to move this duckling a little bit away from the egg. He was blocking some of the progress. Immediately after the small move the duckling burst from the egg and we had our first Silver! Here are just a few more hatching pictures.

On day 27 our first duckling hatched at 3pm and then we had 3 more ducklings hatch by midnight but there were many hours between our first and our second duckling hatched. So 4 hatched on day 27, 4 hatched on day 28 and then we had our last duckling hatch on day 29. The last duckling had pipped on Thursday, day 27, but on day 29 he still hadn't hatched. I was concerned for his safety and decided it was in his best interest to assist him in hatching. He came out very weak and stuck curled up, he couldn't even stand or move his head. Even his feet were curled up into a ball and he was unable to move much. So I proceeded to hold him in my hands and over the next several hours I held him straight and slowly worked his muscles. When he started nibbling on my hands I knew he was ready to go in with the rest of the flock. It took him a little while but eventually he did stand on his own and start walking. It's been 24 hours since I helped him and you can barely tell he had problems hatching. Here he is:

So at the end of our hatch we ended up with 4 Silver, 3 Blue & 2 Black ducklings. 9 out of our original 14 eggs hatched!! Looking at our hatched ducklings and knowing they came to me as little eggs in a box was just amazing to say the least! I can honestly say I can't wait to hatch some more :) Here are some more pictures of the flock all together.

I do plan on continuing this blog as the ducklings grow up. I had planned on placing some of the ducklings but for now I'm enjoying having them all. In about 4 weeks they'll be able to go outside to their new dwelling.  I can tell you that they already LOVE water!! I hope you've had as much fun as I experiencing this and I'll continue to add pictures and updates on this flock. Thanks for reading!!

The eggs are hatching!!!!!!!!!!

So today is day 26 for my duck eggs. At day 26 you either stop turning them or take out your automatic egg turner.
I grabbed a new egg carton and started gently removing the eggs and setting them in the carton. (The egg carton totally saved my nerves worrying about dropping or cracking a shell). So I've got the first 2 eggs in my hands and I hear squeaking. Nothing new in my house. I just figured it was 1 of the 7 pups in have in the whelping box behind me. Then it dawns on me that I just put the pups outside for a potty break. The squeaking is coming from the eggs!!!!!!!
Now it's only day 26 so my logical brain has it set that nothing should be happening until day 28, for another 2 days or more. Not!! I looked at the first 2 eggs that are still in my baffled hands and low and behold the ducklings are already pecking threw the shell! (They call it "pipping"). So as I'm holding an egg in each hand they are chirping at me and pecking threw the shell. Can you imagine the look on my face? haha.

My next step is to freak out that I have my Barred Rock chicks in the brooder for the ducklings. Thankfully the chicks were a month old and very ready to go outside so outside is exactly where they went. I panicked because I hadn't built their enclosed pasture yet but I was able to put together a temporary chicken pasture using one of my dog x-pens. I have a shelter in there for them and I also put it up against my house for their safety. I didn't work hard for a whole month to have them picked off the first day outside :)

Here is exactly what I found this morning.

My hands were shaking a little when I took these pictures so they're a little blurry :) Now all of the eggs are safely out of the turner and laying in my incubator. It'll take a little time to get back up to temp but the humidity is already raising for the hatch. 

I have no plans to go anywhere for a whole week so bring on the hatching!! I'll be taking pictures and updating my blog as the hatch progresses. I'm sooooo excited and nervous all at the same time. Now I know what my husband felt like when I was in labor last year :) Check back for updates!

Time is flying!

Yes, I'm aware I'm running behind in my postings. I've got a litter of 7 pups on the ground and my daughter is teething big time so I was going crazy for a little bit, haha.

I did candle the eggs at 15 days along. I was floored by the development!! It wasn't just a "glob" anymore it looked like an elongated lima bean, if that makes sense to you :) It was very clear what was embryo and what was the air pocket and what was the yolk sac. It was amazing! Sounds silly but I swear I saw movement. Even more amazing!

Above is a picture where you can see what I mean by the elongated lima bean. You can even see a faint outline of the yolk sac the the left of the embryo and the air pocket to the right. And veins everywhere!

The above picture isn't the best but you can clearly see veins branching from the right to the left. The embryo can just barely be seen far to the right. My camera isn't happy about taking pictures without a flash and I can't sit still for a super slow shutter speed :)

I'm trying to make up lost time so I will be candling my eggs again tonight. They'll be 21 days along and I'm so excited to see how much more the embryo's have developed. I will admit that I've become nervous as heck while candling the eggs. I blew out my back because I was so tense and nervous that I'd drop one of the eggs. I already feel like a mother hen :)

Don't count your ducklings before they're hatched

Hard to believe that it's already been 1 week for the eggs in the bator!! I was nervous to touch the bator after our long ordeal of it taking forever to heat back up but I just had to candle the eggs today. I think I figured that problem out...... There are 2 trays for water. You fill one of them up during the incubation phase and you fill both of them up during hatching. At hatching you need a higher humidity. And the rule of thumb is that it's not how deep the water is but how much area it covers that affects your humidity. My eggs having been doing great at 50% so I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. I did notice my humidity going down this so it looks like the water tray needs to be filled once at week if running at 50% humidity.

Eggs normally lose 12%-13% of their body weight while incubating and do dry out slowly. The egg has to lose the amount of weight to make room for the air sac. This air sac will be where the duckling takes it's first breath and gets into hatching position. Too small an air sac equals the duckling being large and too little the ducklings respiratory system will be affected and it'll have a hard time hatching in a smaller space.
Since an egg has a pourous shell we're able to help control the correct loss by regulating the humidity. Sounds complex hey? Next time you see a Momma duck sitting on a nest remember all the chemistry and minute details that I'm stressing over.

Anywho. I'm thinking that I filled the water tray with water that was just a little too cold. I used luke warm water but I don't think that was warm enough. I think that it took so long for the bator to heat back up because it was heating up the water in the tray too. Make sense? I thought so. So today I put in a little warmer water and we'll see what happens.

So on to candling the eggs. Yes I was very curious if any of them took but also to remove any spoiled ones. Don't need one blowing up in there, yuck!
At the 7 day old stage you should be able to see veins all over inside the egg. With mine 13 of the 14 eggs had veins like a body builder! I was floored. It was interesting that the 1 bad egg actually felt a little cooler than the fertile ones.
(I'm sorry for the quality of this pic. My camera just couldn't figure out I wanted. I'll just pull one egg out later and see if I can get better pics but you can clearly see all the veins I was talking about.)

I did notice a floating "glob" along side the veins. I'm gathering that this is the developing embryo.  I did grab a pic and you can just barely make it out. I've circled it in the pic below.

After having them shipped and battling the bator I was figuring I'd be lucky if even half of them took. I hope the eggs keep doing as well as they are but I figure I'll lose a few here or there. That is where the old saying comes in, "Don't count your chicks before they're hatched". However I do like to plan ahead :)

So as I head into the weekend I'm a happy camper. My eggs are veiny and my daughter just cut her first tooth. What an exciting life I live!! Haha. Thanks for following my story and have a great weekend!

Battle with the bator

After letting the eggs sit out and reach room temperature it was time to go into the bator. Keep in mind I let the eggs rest over night to reach room temp and rest after their journey. I wasn't comfortable letting them sit next to the bator instead of in it but I had to make sure it'd be a safe transition. It took 24 hours to get the bator to the temp I desired and to hold that temp, 99.0 - 99.9.

So after rummaging for baby clothes it was into the bator! I didn't want to put them in while I wasn't home which all worked out in the end. I found a ton of affordable baby clothes and my bator temp didn't even out until after I got home anyways.

All 14 eggs went into the bator and are being held in the automatic egg turner. (I mentioned the automatic turner in a previous post so check there for a explanation).  I wanted to take a pic of all the eggs in there and the lid off but I didn't want too much heat to escape. Here is what it looks like:

So I put the lid back on and expected the bator to slowly reach temp. It took another 30 hours of adjusting and checking every 30mins!! At one point I was tempting to throw the darn thing out the window but thought otherwise since I didn't feel like sitting on the eggs myself. But after 30 hours of swearing the temp is holding at 99.3-99.5. Phew!

Now we look 28 days down the road and look for the action to start. It looks like June 22nd will be the start of all the fun! I do plan on candling the eggs at about 7 days, so next we're looking at next Friday for that. Candling in where you shine a flashlight or other light source into the egg and pay attention to signs of development. You want to remove any eggs that are not showing development or that seem to have stopped development. The last thing you want is an egg going bad and blowing up in your bator! Thanks for reading!

The eggs have arrived!!!!

The mail lady couldn't get here fast enough to deliver my duck eggs. Surprisingly she was gentle with the package. Normally our mail gets man handled quite a bit. Here is our much awaited package. I really loved all the written warnings on it :)

I opened the box carefully and let them get a little fresh air and let them reach room temp after their journey. I'm new to this and I wanted to take my time and get it right. I have 14, possible, lives depending on me. Here they are all snuggled into their packaging. You can't see in this picture but half of them are blue which is a signature of the Magpie breed. How cool is that?

 I couldn't help but candle a couple to see what was going on inside. It is way too early to see anything productive but it was fun none the less. You can see the yolk at the top. Ducks like to be wet and sloppy so many times their eggs aren't the cleanest. You just make sure there isn't too much dirt on them for safety sake.

Now onto making final adjustments on the heat and humidity in the incubator. Believe it or not this thing is styro-foam! I kind of felt ripped off for paying money for something that resembled a cheap cooler. haha. Take a look at it.

Duck eggs do need to be turned a few times a day. You want to do it in odd numbers like 3 times a day or 5 times a day. This way the ducklings don't sleep threw the night on the same side each night. This can cause disabilities in the developing duckling. They do sell an automatic egg turner that is set onto the floor of the incubator and is simply plugged in. I'll be using one of these my first time around. The egg turner I bought turns them every 4 hours. Some "hatchers" prefer to hand turn the eggs. I'll be paying close attention to the pro's and con's of the automatic turner and I'll decide if I'll be using it again or selling it. You must stop turning the eggs around day 26, right before they hatch. Obviously it's very important for people using the automatic turner so the ducklings aren't injured.

Not all eggs have the same incubating length. My Magpie eggs will need incubation for 28 days. The 28 days starts when the eggs are put into the incubator and does not start the day they are born. I'm glad I found that out or I'd be 1 week off on my hatch dates. So my eggs will be due to hatch on or around June 22nd.
Here is a list of birds and their incubation lengths:
Chicken- 21 days                                           Duck- 28 to 35 days
Quail- 23 days                                                Parakeet- 18 days
Cortunix- 17 to 18 days                                  Parrots- 28 days
Pheasant- 23 days                                           Dove- 14 days
Chukar- 23 days                                             Mynah- 14 days
Turkey- 28 days                                              Finch- 14 days
Swan- 30 to 37 days                                       Button Quail- 16 days
Goose- 28 to 30 days                                     Valley Quail- 21 to 22 days

There's your hatching lesson for the day :) Thanks everyone for taking the time to read my blog. Feel free to leave comments or questions for me in the space below. Thanks!