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!