![]() Muscovy ducks are very good setters, capable of hatching 12. If you still run into difficulty, then a great way to check you have the right humidity for duck eggs is to use the Egg Weight Loss Method. Duck eggs may be hatched naturally by placing them under a broody duck or even a broody chicken hen. Leaving chicks in an incubator for a few days is an option not afforded to ducklings because of their size and the high possibility of injuring their webbed feet in the rotating trays as they move. Humidity is crucial when incubating duck eggs. The temperature inside the duckling warming area in the brooder ranges between 90 to 92 degrees for the first 72 hours after the duckling’s hatch. If, like me, you had reasonable success hatching chicken eggs, then poor results hatching ducklings, I suggest you start by reading my article concerning Incubation Humidity. For this reason, a shallow water bowl should be used for water, one into which they can submerge their entire bill to keep their mucous membranes. I will be publishing a guide to incubators after completing my evaluation this summer. Ducklings hatched in an incubator, unlike those hatched under a mama duck, don’t have oil glands working yet to coat and waterproof their feathers, so they can easily become waterlogged and drown. In most cases, you get what you pay for with incubators. I tested several different incubators, measuring them with a FLIR Infra-Red camera for temperature distribution. It can indeed be more difficult to hatch ducklings, but I have found the difficulty is mostly cheap incubators with temperature variations between eggs and incorrect humidity settings. When I first started incubating duck eggs, I had terrible hatch rates. Many back garden poultry keepers, like me, start by hatching chicks and then find an interest in keeping ducks, so they incubate some duck eggs. Incubating duck eggs isn’t that different from chicken eggs.
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