How To Incubate Duck Eggs
- Thomas Nelson
- August 21, 2020
- Animals, Sustainable Living
- 0 Comments
For the past few years, I’ve kept and raised ducks as a part of a sustainable, small-scale urban farm. My ducks serve an important purpose: they help control pests like slugs and snails, they lay delicious, nutritious eggs, their manure slowly builds up the soil, and they’re frankly a lot of fun to be around! Each of the ducks I have I hatched myself. Incubating duck eggs is a fun and rewarding hobby. In this article, we’ll talk about how to incubate duck eggs and hatch baby ducks.
One of the best parts of raising ducks are the babies. Ducklings are adorable, friendly, and each one is bursting with personality. When you hatch the ducklings yourself, they tend to be friendlier and more docile toward you.
How to incubate duck eggs
Regardless of breed, most ducks will develop and hatch under approximately the same conditions. Your incubator will need to be set at 99 degrees F and humidity in the incubator needs to rest at around 55%. During the final three days of incubation, humidity should be increased to 65%. Duck eggs will need to be turned either manually or by an automatic egg turner a minimum of three times each day until three days before hatching. At this point, stop turning the eggs and don’t touch them again until they have hatched.
Development and candling
The earliest signs of development are apparent within the first three days of hatching. If candled, which is the practice of shining a bright light into the egg to see internal development, a large, dark, red disk should be visible. By day 5, veins and a small embryo should be visible.
At day 10, candle your eggs. Eggs that have development will be pretty obvious: a large embryo will be seen wiggling around amid a tangle of veins. Eggs that are cloudy, clear, or appear to have a dead embryo with no veins inside need to be removed and discarded.
3 days before hatching, candle your eggs again to discard any that have quit developing and died.
How long to incubate duck eggs
Different types of ducks have different incubating needs.
Khaki campbell ducks: 23 to 28 days
Call ducks: 25 to 28 days
Pekin ducks: 25 to 28 days
Muscovy ducks: 33 to 35 days
Always research the incubation time for the specific breed of duck you’re hatching. Most ducks will hatch after approximately 28 days.
Lockdown and hatching
The period 3 days before hatching is called “lockdown.” During lockdown, stop turning the eggs and increase the humidity to 65%. By the last day of incubation (day 28 for most breeds) your ducks should have all hatched. There are sometimes late bloomers. If you have eggs that have not hatched, leave them be for 2-3 more days. If they still haven’t hatched, candle them again to verify the duck inside is alive.
After hatching, your ducklings will survive for a few days primarily on the internal storage of yolk that they absorbed just before hatching. Once they’ve dried and fluffed up, remove them from the incubator and place in their brooder.
And that’s about all their is to hatching baby ducks of your own!
Keep reading: How to raise ducks in your own back yard
