My muscovies have started laying which means Spring has sprung! This year I’m desperate to replenish my flock, after having warred with a really resourceful raccoon who was getting into the coop before I locked them in for the night. A fierce battle ensued that included a frying pan (the raccoon was unharmed, save for probably its pride at having been defeated by a frying pan wielding crazy person) and I am down to three ducks–my male, my old silver girl, and one that I had hatched last year.

My silver girl is actually quite old for a duck, around 6, but she’s the first one to start laying and has given me an egg a day since, so I’m hoping for at least a few being silvers because the male is hetero for it. Hoping to replace my entire flock into just silvers going forward.

7 eggs in the ‘bator at 37.6 degrees Celsius, starting April 6th. Dry hatching them since humidity is okay here. Day 35 will be May 11th, lockdown will start a week before that (May 4th.) This time I’ll take more video and pictures of my hatching process since there were some requests for it.

April 6th, 2020: Day 0, 7 eggs in the incubator (a Janoel12).

April 11th, 2020: Day 5, first candling session. All 7 are fertile and have begun to develop veins. 1 is a little behind with less veins than the others, but hopefully it will catch up.

April 14th, 2020: Day 8, my silver girl went broody so I stuck 14 eggs under her that should hatch 8 days later than the ones in my incubator. I will have to take them away from her prior to hatching because the first time I let her brood, she ripped the first pip from the egg before it was ready, which killed it. So lack of a bigger incubator? No problem. Another possible 14 ducklings coming up soon. I had two people reserve ducklings from me earlier in the season, any leftover will be on my for sale page (although I will be keeping all the silver henlets and one silver drakelet from these clutches.)

April 17th, 2020: Day 11 for incubator eggs, I candled today and enjoyed seeing the embryos move around in there! Sometimes if they’re close to the surface you can see a black dot that is unmistakably an eyeball. All 7 still look good and we’re now officially a third of the way there!

April 19th, 2020: Candled the ones under my hen (day 5), and 13 out of the 14 eggs have veins. I’ll let the last one go a few more days before chucking. One of the things I noticed (both this and a previous time) about a side by side comparison between the eggs in the incubator and the eggs under the hen is that the eggs under the hen have a thin layer of oil over them, likely from the hens own glands (the one meant to keep her buoyant and waterproof). I wonder if it’s possible that this oily film is what makes the difference in terms of why incubating muscovies has been tricky. Does the oil somehow make it easier for them to hatch? Would say, a thin layer of oil in the incubated batch also help them hatch on their own? If so, what kind of oil would make the most sense? Supposedly the preen gland oil produces a vitamin D3 precursor that turns into vitamin D3 upon exposure to UV light (and sunlight) which gets reingested by the bird itself when it preens. Does this get somehow absorbed through the shell and therefore is a nutrient required post egg lay? My other thought is—is the reason why my assisted hatch works due to the fact I spread oil on the membrane? In that case, would ANY oil do? These are all questions I’m just jotting down because I need somewhere to put them.

Part of me is tempted to add some Vitamin D3 to the eggs in the incubator to see if it increases an unassisted incubator hatch rate… but part of me doesn’t want to risk this batch. After I record the assisted hatch method for this batch, I will try it with the next.

April 21st, 2020: Day 15 for incubator eggs, day 7 for ones under the hen. Candled the ones under the hen and all 14 have veins and are viable. Not much to report… just letting nature do its thing.

April 22nd, 2020: Day 16 for incubator eggs, day 8 for the ones under the hen. One of the ones in the incubator, coincidentally the one I noticed was behind, has most likely quit as its veins mostly dissolved and there’s no movement. I’ll let it go until tomorrow and then throw it out.

April 23rd, 2020: Day 17 for incubator eggs, day 9 for the ones under the hen. Another of the incubator had quit and now I’m wondering if the thunderstorm two days ago caused a surge. And this is why you should have a surge protector for your incubator (which I did not). The other possibility is that since these are the first eggs of the season, they often don’t have as good of an incubation rate. Only time will tell….

April 25th, 2020: Day 19 for the ones in the incubator, day 11 for the ones under the hen, I opened up the ones that quit out of morbid curiosity) and… they were not developed to the point where I thought they would have been. More like what I’d expect on day 12 or 13, I guess. I also noticed the ones that quit never developed veins all the way around the egg when candling, and there is still one more that has not done so either, but is still alive (as a pulsing blob) while the remaining 4 all have filled out the eggs well—and I can actually see little feet moving around in there. I don’t have high hopes for the one that has not developed veins around, but since there is still veins and movement, I’ll leave it be. I imagine it will quit tomorrow or the day after, judging by the development compared with the others. I don’t know why this has happened and am concerned about the ones under the hen as well. I’ll check on them a little later today (when the hen gets off her nest to eat/drink.

April 28th, 2020: Day 22 for the ones in the incubator, day 14 for the ones under the hen. 3 of the ones in the incubator look great, veins all around and mostly dark, with their little beaks moving around every so often. One of them has veins mostly around but…. only half dark. Yet it still moves and bounces around in there. The one that is still missing half… is also moving around in there. Both are alarming to me. I don’t know what’s going on with this batch and am scratching my head since there could be a few explanations. The possible surge, being the first few eggs of the season, a genetic issue (after all, one of my hens is super old, while the other has just started laying but is a clutchmate of the male—but this can be ruled out if the eggs under the hen develop normally)? I’ll have to run another batch again after these hatch to see. The ones under the hen all look great when I candled them today so at the very least I won’t be SOL if this batch fails.

April 30th, 2020: Day 24 for the ones in the incubator, day 16 for the ones under the hen. The one that had veins all around but was only half dark quit so I decided to open it up to see what’s going on. I found a mostly formed little duckling that was the size of my thumb (which is about 1/2 the size of what I expect to find in a day 24 egg.) It even had feathers and eyelids and everything. I took a picture (link here—graphic warning.) Other than the 3 normal ones, there is 1 more that is likely this size that’s still alive. I don’t know if it’ll make it but my fingers are crossed for it because this is way strange. It’ll probably require assistance at hatch though, and that may still not be enough for it. I still don’t know if this is a genetic anomaly or not, and probably won’t know until I candle the ones under the hen in about 5 days or so.

May 6th, 2020: Day 30 for the ones in the incubator, day 22 for the ones under the hen. Against ALL odds, the midget one (that’s what we dubbed it since it only takes up half of the shell) is still alive. One of the normal ones quit, the other two have drawn down their air cells. This incubator batch has just been one problem after the other in contrast to my previous few, and I’m hoping the ones under the hen will make up for it.

May 7th, 2020: Day 31 for the incubator batch, day 23 for the ones under the hen. This batch has just been rough. The midget one quit sometime overnight last night. Which left me with two viable ones. About an hour ago, I had taken a look at them and noticed one of them was breathing very rapidly, but didn’t look like it had internally pipped (which didn’t make sense to me since I thought they had to come into contact with air in order to begin to “breathe.”) I battled with myself wondering if something could be wrong and whether or not I should step in, but convinced myself that it was probably getting ready to internally pip and I should just let it do its thing. About ten minutes ago, I heard cheeping as I passed the incubator and so I checked again—the one that had been rapidly breathing was no longer moving, and I feared the worst. Opened it up to find that it had not been able to break through the membrane and suffocated to death. Nothing is worse than feeling like you could have done something and didn’t (note to self: if I ever have this situation where I notice rapid breathing but no internal pip, open the safety hole and give it a safety hole at the membrane as well.) The other one just internally pipped, so I made a safety hole, oiled the membrane, wrapped in a plastic bag with safety holes, and will now wait. Fortunately, I have the other ones under the hen so hopefully it won’t be too lonely should it make it.

May 10th, 2020: Day 34 for the surviving incubator chick/egg, day 26 for the ones under the hen (which I candled today and all of them look great.) So the last few days have been fraught with terror: the surviving incubator egg attempted to unzip with its yolk partially unabsorbed yesterday (not badly, about the size of a bean). One of the good things about having the plastic wrap on hand is that I can essentially prevent it from hatching by tightening it up, which is exactly what I did. It’s quite unhappy in its bag egg prison hybrid but it prevents it from moving and possibly rupturing the yolk sac and dying from infection or prolapsing its organs. I just checked on it now and the yolk has been absorbed but the naval is just not completely closed so I’ll keep it in there for another two hours or so, loosen the bag, and then allow it to finish doing its thing.

May 11th, 2020: Day 35 for the little chick. It’s about 2am right now and it’s officially out! A little dab of Neosporin on the navel, some electrolyte water (baking soda, salt, sugar), nutritional yeast and antibiotics (in the event its slow absorption risked an infection), and a rubber ducky and fuzzy lemon to keep it company. Thankfully the clutch under the hen (on day 27) will be hatching in just a few days so it won’t be lonely for too long. This has been one of the worst hatches I’ve had in years, unfortunately, but I’m glad this little one made it out okay!

May 16th, 2020: The first duckling turned out to be a “she” via vent sexing. It’s day 32 for the ones under the hen, except they are now all in the incubator because my silver hen decided she no longer wished to brood on day 29—my husband thankfully caught on one night when we found her ambling around outside for several hours doing normal duck things, while the eggs went cold (40 degrees Fahrenheit.) I had thought they were gone for sure but when I warmed them up in the incubator, there was movement. She never did go back to her nest so I am pretty glad I caught it in time. 13/14 of them have internally pipped and are all chirping away in their little baggies.

I’ll have solved the question of what color genetics are in my silver (which may be a lavender) as there looks to be pied light colored ducklings this time around—should they be blue, then the hen is silver for sure, should they be pied gray, then it looks like I have a lavender hen. The last egg I don’t have high hopes for, since while alive, it looks like it still has a lot of fluid in it. I poked a small hole where it’s beak was at the membrane as a just in case. Hopefully it will make it but I’m not going to hold my breath…

May 17th, 2020: Day 33 for the ones under the hen finishing in the incubator. Against my prediction, the last one internally pipped as well. So now we have 14 out of 14 eggs finishing up in the incubator. As I was typing this, one started unzipping!

May 19th, 2020: Day 35 for the ones under the hen finishing in the incubator. 9/14 have hatched and are running around in my bathtub. 2 have been reserved already and their new owner is coming to pick them up tomorrow. The other 5 are just finishing up. Ah they are so cute and fresh. So far, three came out with soft gray patches instead of the usual black. I don’t know if they’re going to be blue or lavender though. I’m already dreaming of putting in a chocolate to get some blue fawns.

May 22nd, 2020: Day 38 for the ones under the hen finishing in the incubator. 14/14 are now out. The last one took an entire extra day to come out. In total it looks like I have 5 silver pieds, and confirmed my silver hen is indeed silver and not a blue and chocolate dilution. These five will be kept to create a silver pied flock, although I am tempted to add some chocolate in. That’s it for this year’s hatching! Unfortunately due to the issues with COVID-19, I have some other projects that need focusing on so I will only be hatching this one clutch this year.