[Bionic]

My ducks aren't prolific layers but I do get the occasional egg and this morning there were 2. They girls don't seem to show any interest in sitting on the eggs so I take them away and eat them. But now I am wondering, if I had an incubator, would future eggs be likely to hatch?

[twizzel]

I'm trying this at the moment I've got 12 eggs from my white campbells under a broody light sussex hen. She's on day 9 now and religiously gets off once a day to eat and that's it... my 2 ducks have a drake and I've seen him working so thought a little experiment was in order! (my hen went broody the day after I filled up my incubator with chicken eggs... typical!)

[benkt]

In my experience duck eggs have a bit lower hatch rate than chickens - which could be down to me and my incubator of course - but as long as you've seen the drake treading then you've got a fair chance of hatching something.

[shygirl]

we tried all spring one year but apparently our drake wasnt very fertile as we never had a single duckling or even a hint of development in the egg. we wasted alot of eggs through trying.
but it was worth a go. i presume you have a rampant drake?

[Bionic]

Oh yes, the drake is happy to have his way at every opportunity. Typical male 

[bloomer]

Oh yes, the drake is happy to have his way at every opportunity. Typical male 

and this is why we need a like button!!!


 

[doganjo]

Oh yes, the drake is happy to have his way at every opportunity. Typical male 

and this is why we need a like button!!!


 

That's exactly what I thought!

[northfifeduckling]

Ducks are checking out if the eggs are safe and lay about 10 and then start sitting....you can try to leave them a few days and watch the nest grow. I have 3 attemps at nesting outdoors to deal with at the moment, we could not cope with anymore ducks after last year's flooding with babies! They can be very determined if broody! 

[HesterF]

I've never had a broody duck but, yes, you can hatch them in an incubator. I find them much easier to candle than chicken eggs and generally great fertility. BUT I find them much harder to hatch - not quite as hard as geese though! Water loss is harder and they really have to lose 12% plus weight before they can hatch so they don't seem to pop out as easily as chicks.

[AndynJ]

Oh yes, the drake is happy to have his way at every opportunity. Typical male 

On behalf of all men
"we resemble that remark" Er er I mean er 

Chance would be a fine thing

I stand and watch the cockerels now & then the wife sometimes asks why are you watching and laughing ?

In future I will not give her my usual answer I'll show her this post. 

Give a couple of eggs to someone who does have an incubator as a trial

[F.CUTHBERT]

I've never had a broody duck but, yes, you can hatch them in an incubator. I find them much easier to candle than chicken eggs and generally great fertility. BUT I find them much harder to hatch - not quite as hard as geese though! Water loss is harder and they really have to lose 12% plus weight before they can hatch so they don't seem to pop out as easily as chicks.

I have always found duck eggs to be pretty easy to hatch. I have certainly had much better results with ducks than when I tried pheasants a few years back, that was a disaster. However having said that our hatch this year was pretty poor. We only hatched 22 out of 48 eggs candled at day 25. The ones that hatched all came out pretty much at the same time, seen the hatch dragging over a few days, the rest were all fully formed but dead having failed to break through.
We had problems with the egg turning motor early in the incubation and had to replace it, whether this had any effect i'm not sure. Having read on here about running dry at the start I only used 2 water dishes for humidity rather than the usual four for the first 3 weeks before ramping it up near the hatch . Despite this the eggs only lost 10% of there weight to day 25. Should I have used no water at the start or just stuck with what has worked relatively well in the past?

[NicandChic]

I'm hoping to hatch some of our duck eggs, incubator is on its way so our girls 'had' both gone broody - prior to getting a drake, since the man about the yard has arrived they are more interested in wondering about with their new flame! So hopefully they may hatch some of their own next year!

Good luck if you go ahead 

[Fleecewife]

My ducks aren't prolific layers but I do get the occasional egg and this morning there were 2. They girls don't seem to show any interest in sitting on the eggs so I take them away and eat them. But now I am wondering, if I had an incubator, would future eggs be likely to hatch?

They wouldn't start sitting until they had about 10 days worth collected up in their nest surely?

The only duck we've ever kept is Muscovies and they loved to go broody and hatch large clutches of eggs - which nearly always turned out to be mostly male     Sometimes they would disappear for so long we thought the fox had got them, then they would wander out of the undergrowth with a gaggle of ducklings in tow, or sometimes they would sit in a hen house.
An advantage of using a live duck instead of an incubator is that you don't have to worry about moisture - the ducks regulate that themselves.
We used to have one or two infertile eggs with each sitting and we would remove those as soon as we could see (hear) that they were going off.
A duck also knows how long to sit for.  It's longer than a hen, so I've wondered if hens used to incubate duck eggs would give up too early.  The poor hen must also surely suffer several heart attacks a day when her 'chicks' jump in the water 

[Bionic]

Well, there are 6 eggs now. I had 5 indoors and she laid another this morning so I decided to put them all back. I'm not loosing anything is nothing happens (apart from ducks eggs for cakes).


I need to keep my eyes on them though as a couple days running I have seen a crow eating the eggs. The duck lays in the duck house so I don't know if she then took them outside or of the crow is very bold and is going into the house and taking them out.

[doganjo]

Crows, magpies and rats will all go inside a shed and take eggs away whole.  I check my duck shed every morning when i let them pout, and i don't let them out till after 10 am.