Author Topic: Incubating Duck eggs (Read 3721 times)

The Woodsiders · « **on:** March 30, 2014, 11:56:38 am »

Good morning
Would be grateful for some advice please, our Aylesbury duck has just started laying and we would like to hatch the eggs, we have a Chicktec Smart model but no idea what to do, could someone let us know the ideal temperature and humidity to start, there are no instructions with the incubator, if we can get started then we can get some reading material next week.
Many thanks

Mark

jaykay · « **Reply #1 on:** March 30, 2014, 02:06:19 pm »

Hi

I incubate duck eggs at 37C and 55% humidity. It takes 28 days in general.
Stop turning them a couple of days before they're due to hatch (so the ducklings can work out which way is up

). Increase the humidity to 70-75% the day of hatching.

Try very hard to avoid the temptation to keep taking off the lid to look

serious point, in that you lose humidity each time.

Remove ducklings once dry and fluffed up, and put under heat lamp.

HesterF · « **Reply #2 on:** March 30, 2014, 10:41:55 pm »

I incubate without any added water until shut down for hatching. I had all sorts of hatching problems last year so I've been weighing the eggs this year and realised they weren't losing anywhere near enough weight which is why it's running dry now. Best thing to do is monitor weight loss. They should lose 14% of their weight over 28 days so check after a week that they've lost 3-4% of their initial weight and adjust humidity accordingly.

I use the same temp as chickens 37.3 - 37.4 degrees.

hughesy · « **Reply #3 on:** March 31, 2014, 08:03:29 am »

Having just hatched some ducklings here's our method. Temperature 37.5C until day 25, run the incy dry which in our case was about 40% r/h. On day 25 reduce the temp to 37C and whack the humidity up to 75 or 80%. You should hear the ducklings cheeping in the shell sometime soon and hatching takes place around 28 days. Our last hatch resulted in a 75% success rate which is about the norm for us.