[Womble]

Well........

Out of 24 fertile eggs set, only five ducklings hatched  .

I ran the incubator dry or with just a small piece of damp cloth inside until day 25 (humidity consistently controlled at 40% that way), then upped the humidity to 60-65% on day 25. I wrapped the incubator loosley in a blanket to keep everything warm, as per the comments above, and ran it at 37.5 degC throughout.

The eggs that hatched, did so on day 26 (an indication things were too hot perhaps?), whereas for the ones that did not hatch, 50% had died with only a few days to go, 25% had pipped internally but not externally, and 25% had died full term, not even pipping internally.

I'm at a loss as to what to try next TBH. I'm running at about £7.00 per chick at the moment, and rapidly losing patience  .  Any advice, lovely people of TAS? 

[twizzel]

I wonder if your humidity wasn't high enough? Everything I read r.e ducks pointed to 60% in first 25 days then 80% in last 3 to prevent shrink wrapping. I hatched 5 out of 12 eggs this way, 4 were in fertile and 3 died early on in the first week but the other 5 made it right through to hatching.

[HesterF]

Womble it sounds exactly like my last disastrous duck hatch (posted about it a couple of weeks ago). I got 2 out of 12 out and at least three died after having internally pipped but not managing to externally pip - quicly too, they'd been peeping in the morning and had died by the evening. Last year I got six out of six cayugas hatched with low humidity and terrible hatching at high humidity so I think there's more to it than that. I reckon the stage of season has an influence too - the early eggs are thicker shelled. I'm interested to see how the eggs I've posted out have gone because they were later than my own hatch. I'm trying to hatch geese at the moment (although I think I'm down to only one possible in this week's hatch - I don't know whether that's a good thing or not) but I'm going to try another duck batch in a couple of weeks. I've been weighing assiduously and they've all been on target weight loss wise although there has been variation within the batch & the two that made it out were the only ones to have lost more weight than they needed to.

In contrast I've had a huge batch of chicks - set 21, two died part-way through but the remaining 19 all popped out with virtually no intervention. I went up to London for they day with one having hatched before I left and came back to an incubator full of 14 chicks and the remaining five having pipped. Bliss! My current conclusion is just that ducks are harder. Even the broody hens seem to find them harder.

Sorry, that's not much use, is it?