Hatching Process and When to Help

Hatching your own eggs is a wonderful experience. Caring for the eggs, making sure the temperature is just right, ensuring there is enough humidity, and then going through the nerve wracking experience of watching the chicks’ struggle to escape the shell can be very rewarding. After all of your hard work, of course you will be nervous the little ones hatch successfully. Then you see one that seems to be in trouble. Your first instinct may be to help it, and that is fine, but you should know a few things first.

As it incubates, the embryo is encased by a membrane consisting of blood vessels. These vessels provide oxygen that enters the egg through the shell to the embryo. Several days before hatching, this network of vessels begins to break down and the embryo lacks sufficient oxygen. The egg will have slowly dried out during incubation, forming an air sack. This sack is pierced by the chick in order to get oxygen. Since there is not a lot of air in the sack, the chick will continue to peck until it ‘pips’ a tiny protrusion on the shell which allows for a greater flow of oxygen. After pipping, the chick will rest for 12 to 24 hours.

Once the chick has rested, it starts to make its way out of the egg. It starts at the pip before turning slightly and pecking again. The chick will continue this pattern around the egg until it forms a ‘lid’ which it can push open and wiggle out the rest of the way. During this process, the chick will take several breaks until it is finished about 1 to 3 hours later.

These rest periods are where most nervous soon-to-be bird parents think they are needed the most. After seeing and hearing movement only to have them go quiet and still can be stressful. Knowing when and when not to help a chick hatch is important.

When you help could mean life or death for the chick. If you help before the network of blood veins has completely broken down, you can cause the chick to bleed to death. Following are three scenarios and our recommendations for each.

• The chick forms a hole where it pipped and does not start rotating within the shell. In this situation you must be careful as not everything went as it should. You can try to help, but stop and try several hours later if you see blood forming where you have broken the shell.
  
  In the following video, we did not see blood until the 'lid' had been taken off. Make sure to stop and try again several hours later whenever you see blood.
  
  

  
  
• If the duckling has started turning and breaking the shell, then runs into a problem and stops turning, you can normally help them without a problem. The key is they have started turning in the shell which means the blood vessels under the shell have shut down and you can help them without fear of excessive bleeding. Gently pull the head out from under the wing and allow the chick to escape the rest of the egg on its own.
  
  The following video shows a variety of eggs where the 'lid' has not been developed and the chick has not turned, but we were able to help them because there was no blood.
  
  

  
  
• If the chick has gone completely around and formed a ‘lid’ only to get stuck, you can definitely help them out by removing the cap.
  
  

Many believe that helping during hatch will make the chick weak. This is not necessarily true. You could have a perfectly healthy and fit chick, but due to less than ideal incubation conditions, it may not be able to hatch on its own. On the flip side, it is possible to get a weaker chick when helping a less than healthy chick to hatch. As author and waterfowl expert Holderread says, hatching is like a “fitness test” for the chicks.

Broody Ducks

Any experienced waterfowl owner has seen the signs of their females going broody. To new owners, however, it can be alarming. We regularly receive frantic phone calls saying that their females have started behaving strangely and that they do not know what to do.

Broodiness is basically a biological clock that tells a female bird that it is time to sit on her eggs full time. When she lays eggs, she is not broody as she does not sit continuously on the eggs. She merely lays her eggs in the nest and then leaves. Once she has a full next of eggs, she will start sitting on the eggs to hatch them. Only in extreme instances will a female become broody without eggs in the nest. During this time she leaves her nest once a day to eat, drink, and do her business. As it is her instinct to protect her eggs, she will become territorial and grumpy. This will continue until the eggs hatch.

Most birds that become broody take care of themselves while on the nest, only leaving once or twice a day to eat and bathe. As such, they are more susceptible to predators, mites, ants, and other bugs and pests. In extreme cases of those that continue to sit on eggs that will not hatch they run the risk of malnutrition, dehydration, and even death.

If you think your bird will go broody, it is important to encourage her to nest in a safe place. This can be done by providing nesting boxes in advance. Waterfowl have a tendency of choosing a spot for their nest and sticking to it even if the nest is moved. (We had a customer call us once at her wits end. Her goose had built a nest in the middle of a high traffic walkway and was plugging up a pipe. We told her to move the nest since she did not want to destroy it, but when she did the goose rebuilt the nest in the exact same place as before!) Chris and Mike Ashton suggest in ‘The Domestic Duck’ to leave the bird alone while she is sitting and to separate her from any males. To help with exercise, Dave Holderread in ‘Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks’ suggests placing food and water just out of reach in order to entice her to leave the nest in order to take care of her needs. We suggest switching from a layer feed to a grower feed while she is broody. In the situation that a bird goes broody, but there is no possible way for the eggs to hatch (no males in the flock), it is possible to slip fertile eggs under her or even ducklings/goslings and trick her into thinking the eggs have hatched.

There are some instances in which you do not want your bird to remain broody such as when they go broody without eggs or you rely on her for egg production. Once they start sitting, they stop laying. The best way we find to stop brooding is to take away any eggs and destroy the nest. To discourage her from attempting to make another nest, make sure there are no materials available to her to make a nest. In large-scale turkey farms they have small pens in the laying buildings that have cement or wire floors in which they put their broody hens. After they appear to have lost their broody instinct and no longer want to sit, which can take about 3-4 days, they are returned to the rest of the flock.

We find there are some breeds that are broodier than others. Sebastapol geese are the worst of the bunch on our farm, followed by the African and Buff. On the duck side, the Cayuga seem to be the broodiest followed by the Rouen. On the opposite end, we do not really know who is less broody out of our geese, but our Runner are the least likely ducks to be broody.

A bird going broody is perfectly natural and some breeds can be more broody than others. There are steps you can take to help them through it or to stop it. Hopefully these guides will help you with your broody birds.

Khaki Campbell

The Khaki Campbell was first bred in the late 1800s by Adele Campbell in Gloucestershire, England. She had crossed her Fawn and White Indian Runners with Rouens in order to make a breed with exceptional egg laying abilities with larger bodies. Wanting the then popular buff color, she tried to breed her original Campbells with Penciled Runners. She did not get the buff color she wanted, but the color she got was similar to the khaki color used in British army uniforms so the ducks became Khaki Campbells.

The newly dubbed Khaki Campbell was introduced to the public in 1898 and made its way to the United States in 1929 thanks in part to Perry Fish of Syracuse, New York. They became a part of the American Standard of Perfection in 1941, despite the fact their numbers had languished for several years. This changed in the 1970’s when the Khaki Campbell population increased due to social movements to return to the land and duck egg demand increased due to Vietnamese immigrants after the Vietnam War.

 

The Khaki Campbell is a light weight bird, around 3½ to 4½ pounds, and a very prolific layer. In 1920 Aalt Jansen from the Netherlands started breeding Khaki Campbel
l imported from England. With careful breeding and testing, Jansen was able to produce a strain that averaged 335 to 340 eggs per duck per laying year. With a flock of 50,000 that is 16.75 million eggs per year which was extraordinary at the time. The Jansen flock was eventually picked up by the Kortlang family in England. John Metzer has visited the Kortlang farm and our own Khaki Campbells have some Kortlang blood in them.

Jansen Farms Letter Header April 15, 1978

Breed	Temperament	Weight	Egg Production	Mothering	Bluish Eggs	Egg Size
Khaki Campbell	Nervous	3.5 - 4.5 pounds	165-240/year	Good	<5%	75-85 grams
Fertility	APA Class	Foraging Ability	Conservation Status	Our Show Quality	Flying Ability	Origin
87%	Light	Very Good	Watch	Fairly Good	Maybe	England

Golden 300 Hybrid and White Layer Ducks

Golden 300 Hybrid ducks

The Golden 300 Hybrid was developed by us in 1996 in order to meet customer demand for ducks that produce a high volume of eggs but are calmer than the Khaki Campbell. Several years after that the White Layer was developed as customers wanted a duck that had a lighter colored embryo for balut purposes.

White Layer ducks

The Golden 300 and the White Layer are our top egg layers, capable of laying 230 eggs in 40 weeks of production or 290 eggs if they lay for a full year. The only difference we have found between these two strains is the White Layer lays about 1-2% blue/green eggs and the Golden 300 lays about 5% of blue/green eggs. Otherwise they are identical in terms of egg production, egg size, shell strength, etc.

We crossed different breeds of ducks together to make the Golden 300, the breeds of which are a secret! Since the Golden 300 and White Layer are composed of different breeds, they have quite a bit of hybrid vigor and typically have less mortality and live longer than most other breeds. Their eggs are not as large as a Pekin but they produce many more and … produce much less manure!

Male Golden 300 Hybrid ducklings

As ducklings, the sex of the Golden 300 can be determined by their down color. Female ducklings are shades of brown including light brown, chocolate brown, and combinations of brown and yellow, while males are shades of black ranging from stark black to different patterns of black and yellow. As adults, the female can range in color from a light brown to a dark brown with patches of white. Adult males have a much darker plumage ranging in color from all black to black with a white chest to almost a male Rouen appearance. The White Layer, on the other hand, has to be vent sexed as both male and female are yellow as ducklings and white as adults.

If you produce babies from our Golden 300 they will not retain these characteristics of females being brown and males being black. You will hatch all colors, including white, with no relationship between the color and the sex. The White Layer, however, breeds true, meaning the White Layers will produce more white ducks.

Typically they also have great temperaments making them good as pets. We have had some customers, however, that tell us their White Layers and Golden 300 are very nervous and we have had other customers tell us their birds are calm. This is puzzling to us as the genetics does not change. So what causes this wide swings in temperament?

Female Golden 300 Hybrid ducklings

I phoned Dave Holderread, waterfowl breeder and author, and he also agreed that some birds can be nervous and others calm from the same breed. His only guess is that there is a period in their early lives where they are very susceptible to and impressionable by fear. They are scared by a dog, or they are caught and handled by a person, or light movements at night scare them and they are not only terrified but are nervous from that point on.

Can we tell you when that susceptible period is? No. Can we tell you when that period ends? No. All we can say is to allow them to have plenty of room to move away from you in their pen (if they are running or flapping you are moving too close or too fast), warn them you are coming (rattle your keys, whistle, sing, knock on the door or simply talk to them as you approach) and do not overcrowd them. You can always give your birds treats from the very beginning but you cannot count on the treats to totally overcome a traumatic event that makes them overly nervous.

People ask how much egg production will drop in the second generation if our Golden 300 or White Layers are used as breeders. We do not know for sure but our guess is the progeny will lay 5-8% fewer eggs than the birds you purchased from us. We are also asked how much production drops in their second and third years of production. The rule of thumb is a drop of about 8-10% per year.

White Layer duckling

You cannot find a better egg laying duck than the Golden 300 or White Layer. Whether you just want a few ducks for your own family’s needs or you want a commercial flock to sell eggs to farmers markets, bakeries and restaurants, the Golden 300 and White Layer are the ducks for you.

Breed	Temperament	Weight	Egg Production	Mothering	Bluish Eggs	Egg Size
Golden 300 Hybrid	Calm	4.5-5.75 pounds	200-290/year	Fair	5%	75-90 grams
Fertility	APA Class	Foraging Ability	Conservation Status	Our Show Quality	Flying Ability	Origin
93%	NA	Good	No Rank	Not Shown	None	Metzer Farms

Breed	Temperament	Weight	Egg Production	Mothering	Bluish Eggs	Egg Size
White Layer	Calm	4.5-5.75pounds	200-290/year	Fair	1-2%	75-90 grams
Fertility	APA Class	Foraging Ability	Conservation Status	Our Show Quality	Flying Ability	Origin
93%	NA	Good	No Rank	Not for Exhibition	None	Metzer Farms

What Causes Runts?

The word ‘runt’ has a lot of negative connotation to it. Runts are thought of as weak and sickly. I’m here to tell you that this is not true! The official Google definition of a runt is “an animal that is smaller than average”. A runt is just a smaller version of the same breed. That doesn’t mean it is sick or weak, just small.

What causes this? Our veterinarian’s theory is that it has to do with the flora in the gut. Everyone has bacteria in their stomach, both good and bad. The good bacteria colonizes in the stomach and helps with digestion. Runts, however, do not seem to have as much good bacteria or it has the wrong kind of bacteria colonizing in its gut. This means that it doesn’t digest its food as well and therefore does not grow as fast as its siblings.

There is a way to fix this. By providing the correct probiotics, runts are capable of catching up in growth with the rest of the flock. You can find probiotic supplement packs at your local feed store or Amazon. The probiotics help to develop the good bacteria in the bird’s gut that will help with digestion and facilitate growth. You can mix this in the communal feed as the extra probiotics may benefit your other birds, too.

Other potential causes include hatching from small eggs, viral infection, genetics, coccidiosis, and bacterial infection during incubation. While these are valid causes, our veterinarian believes they cause far fewer runts than improper bacteria in the gut.

For further information, Andy Schneider, the Chicken Whisperer, has an article in his Chicken Whisperer Magazine that goes further into probiotics for poultry. While this article is about chickens, the same applies to ducks and geese.

The main question is what this means for you. If you are a commercial producer, we suggest culling the runts if only because their growth rate will be off of your expected processing date. For example, Pekin are ready for processing at 7 weeks, but your runt may not catch up until about week 12.

The following picture is from one of our customers, a Hutterite colony in Montana in 2014. They and other colonies order Pekin ducklings by the thousands and you can clearly see in the photo that there were several ducklings that were not growing as fast as the others. They were 4 weeks and 4 days of age for the picture. When it came time for processing at 12 weeks, however, they could not tell which had been the runts!

If your main concern is egg production, a runt’s egg production start will probably be delayed. If the runt is treated, however, and catches up in growth, they should be on time to start laying with the rest of the flock.

Both the meat and eggs are still good to eat. Remember, a runt is simply smaller.

Whether your birds are pets or not, make sure you keep them all fed, watered, and warm. It will take time for them to catch up in growth, but it will be worth it in the end.

Are my eggs fertile?

A common question that we get is if the eggs, whether they are the eggs they receive from us, eggs their own ducks are laying, or eggs they find out in the wild, are fertile. The simple answer is that we do not know.

One way to find out if your egg is fertile is to crack it open. While this does prevent you from incubating the egg, it does tell you if an egg is fertile. Maybe you just wanted to check to make sure your single male was fertile. It is also a great way to check fertility if you are eating some of your eggs. If you look closely at the yolk and see a white doughnut shaped spot, then the egg was fertile. If the white spot was solid and irregularly shaped, then it was infertile.

Fertile egg

Infertile egg

The only way to find out if your egg is fertile without cracking it open is to incubate and then candle the egg. This normally takes about six days before you can clearly see development in the egg. You can use our candling photos on our website to track the development of your eggs.

If you do not see development after six days, we suggest you continue incubating as it could be that your flashlight is not strong enough (see our candling page for explanation). If you don’t see anything by ten days, then you know for sure your eggs were either infertile or died very early in development.

We guarantee that 80% of our eggs will be fertile and alive at first candling. This does not mean that we guarantee 80% hatch as there is also a spike in mortality the two days before hatching.The most common times for the embryo to die are the first several days of incubation and the last several days before hatching. So an egg that died early in incubation was truly fertile as it started to grow, but oftentimes these early deaths and truly infertile eggs are called “infertile”. This early death can be caused by many things and is typically caused by incubator conditions - over which we have no control.  

The Power of Science

In the future, there is a possibility of identifying fertile eggs without breaking them open or incubating them. Several research teams have been developing processes to determine the fertility and even the sex of an egg without cracking it and before it goes into an incubator. Egg Farmers of Ontario in concert with Michael Ngadi from McGill University have found a way to determine fertility and sex of an egg using various light waves and are working to make it commercially available to hatcheries. At the same time, Vital Farms in the USA and Novatrans in Israel are looking to put their invention into commercial production which uses the gases exuded from an egg to determine fertility and sex.

This is exciting for large commercial hatcheries producing laying chicks as they do not have a market for the male chicks and currently put down the excess males after hatching. If they can determine the sex before incubation, the male eggs could be sold for consumption. Likewise, infertile eggs could be sold for consumption and money would not be spent on labor and equipment to incubate infertile eggs that have no chance of hatching. These processes should be available to large hatcheries within several years, but when this technology filters down to us and hobby hatcheries

is anyone’s guess. So until that happens you have to do what has been done for the past century - break the egg or incubate it to determine if it is fertile.

Why Has My Duck Stopped Laying Eggs?

Around mid Autumn we get a lot of questions on egg laying. Many duck owners do not know why their ducks have slowed down or stopped laying all together. The simple answer is that ducks are similar to chickens as laying is heaviest during the spring into summer and starts to decline or even stop during the fall and winter.

Keep in mind that this is for ducks not raised under artificial lighting. Ducks need at least 17 hours of light in order to continuously lay year-round. Without it production drops. If you would like to learn more about ducks under artificial lighting, please read.

Breed and environment are the two main factors when it comes to a duck laying eggs. Some breeds naturally lay more eggs than others. They also require a relatively stress-free environment and adequate day length.

Different breeds can lay a different number of eggs. A Khaki Campbell lays a lot of eggs throughout the year and is even likely to lay year-round. On the other hand, a Mallard does not lay as many eggs and is likely to slow or stop laying come fall and winter.

Stress affects how a duck lays. If a duck is stressed, it will not lay as well. Stress can come from anything such as predators, loud noises, or a change in their environment such as a new feed, animal or person.

Day length is a major factor in how a duck lays as the days start to get shorter in the fall. The longer the day, the longer ducks will lay while shorter days can stop them from laying. This affect is most obviously seen in Northern states that have a drastic difference between their longest and shortest day. In Southern states, however, this change is not as obvious as the time gap between their longest and shortest day is minimal. For example, a duck could lay longer in Florida than the same duck would lay in Alaska.

Bottom line is to not panic when your ducks stop or slow down in laying eggs. Ducks naturally decline in laying as the days get shorter. How much and for how long depends on the breed and their environment. Stress can cause issues with laying and day length affects how long the duck lays.

If you would like to see what kind of duck would be best for egg laying for your needs, we encourage you to visit our website and look at our Duck Breed Comparison chart.

How We Make Blown Goose and Duck Eggs

Blown duck and goose eggs can be used to make beautifully decorated egg art. To see examples, see our post on BlownEgg Art.

How the eggs are emptied and cleaned for decorating can differ from person to person. An older method of blowing the eggs is to poke a hole in both ends of the egg, swirl a stick in it to break up the yolk, and literally blow into the egg in one end and the yolk and white goes out the other end - hence the term ‘blown’ egg.

We do not physically blow our duck and goose eggs, however, as we would have fainting employees every day if we did! 
 

We start with a device that helps us mark the exact center of the large end of the egg. We want the hole in the exact center so if the egg is hung from the hole, the egg hangs perfectly straight. The egg is then taken to a Dremel drill and using one of their 192 carving/engraving bits we drill the actual hole which measures 5/32 of an inch in diameter.

The drilled eggs are then placed hole down over short pieces of small copper tubing that are connected to an air compressor and a water source. Initially air is blown into the egg which forces the egg contents out the hole. After the insides are drained, water is then pushed through the copper tube to rinse out any remaining contents. Then we use a soap solution to clean the inside. Finally, we rinse out the soapy water with clean water and use a final blast of air to get all the water out of the egg. 
 

Goose eggs are measured after cleaning. A tape measure is wrapped around the length of the egg, not the width, to determine the size. The eggs are sold by this circumference measurement and range from 8“ to over 12“. A 10“ goose egg, for instance, measures anywhere from 10“ to almost 10.5“ in circumference. Duck eggs, on the other hand, are measured by their weight when they are washed by our automatic egg washer and grader when they enter the hatchery. The duck eggs come in Pee Wee, Small, Medium, Large and Jumbo sizes. As duck eggs are much larger than chicken eggs, our Small is equivalent to a Jumbo chicken egg.

After the egg contents have been removed and the inside of the egg has been cleaned and rinsed, the shell itself is carefully cleaned with a dilute solution of water and vinegar.

Once shiny and clean, the eggs are left to dry and then boxed and stored until a customer places an order for them. If blown and cleaned properly, an egg should never decay. For more information on the blown eggs we sell, please visit our BlownGoose and Duck Egg page on our website.

What Temperatures Kill In An Incubator?

We all know the ideal temperature for incubators range from about 98 to 100.3 depending on the stage of incubation.  But what happens if your incubator becomes too hot or too cold?  Of course each circumstance is different but I can tell you some of my experiences and maybe this will help you in case you have a problem in the future.

Low Temperature:
We remove some of our fertile duck eggs at 17 days of incubation and sell them as balut (a Filipino and Vietnamese delicacy).  Recently we set aside 160 large balut on Thursday for a customer that was to pick them up on Friday.  On Saturday we realized they were not going to be picked up.  I decided to put them back in the incubator but first I checked their shell temperature.  The surface temperature of each egg was between 71 and 73 degrees.  Remember, these eggs had been out of the incubator for 48 hours in flats in a case at room temperature.

We monitored those eggs and ten days later 75% of them hatched!  They were a day late but we still hatched 120 ducklings!  This was only 13% less than if they had not sat out for two days.

These eggs were old enough that they were putting off more heat than they required, so development was slowed but not stopped.  So if for some reason your incubator has a problem and cools down for a period of time, don't worry.  It probably will not adversely affect your hatch.

High Temperatures
High temperatures in an incubator are an entirely different matter.   Injury or death depends on how hot it gets and how long it is hot.  Hot temperatures for brief periods usually cause no problem.  But sustained higher temperatures allow the entire interior of the egg to become hot and that is when injury and death occurs.  And if it is an older embryo, it is generating heat and this makes overheating even quicker.

There are no black and white limits with overheating.  Years ago I lost all the eggs in an incubator when it was 105 degrees for six hours.  But on another occasion, I had no losses when the incubator was 102 for four hours.  An interior temperature of 103 almost guarantees death.

Just recently we had a machine that was supposed to be 98.7 gradually increase to 104 degrees over 3.5 hours.  When it was discovered, we cooled the eggs as described below and the resulting hatch was completely normal.  The eggs were 24 days old at the time.

What To Do When You Discover Your Hot Incubator
Immediately cool the eggs with water.  If you have lots of eggs, spray with a garden sprayer or hose.  If you have just a few eggs, dunk each egg in cool, not cold, water.  Blow air over the eggs to more quickly cool them.  Each time the egg dries, wet it again.  Remember that as you cool the eggs, the shell will cool faster than the interior - but it is the embryo in the interior that must be cooled.  Therefore, you want to cool the shell lower than the ideal temperature.  And as I described above, don't be afraid of cooling them too much as temperatures below ideal will not be a problem.

If you have an infrared thermometer, I would cool the shell to 80-85 degrees.  If you do not have a thermometer, hold it against your eye lid.  Once it feels slightly cool, put it back in the incubator and turn it on (assuming you have fixed the problem in your incubator!).

Don't Give Up On The Eggs
Once you stabilize the temperature, wait a day and then candle the eggs.  If they have died, you will know as there will be no movement and all blood veins will have disintegrated.  Only then should you throw away your eggs.  If you are not sure, leave the eggs in the incubator.  You have little to lose keeping them in the incubator.

What experiences do you have after finding incubators colder or hotter than they should be?

What Is So Special About A Constant Incubator Temperature?

Most of you have incubators that have several different ages of eggs in them.  And you have your incubator set to one constant temperature.  Right?  What I learned the other day is you want one constant temperature during incubation.  But not the incubator temperature - the shell temperature!

Last Friday we were visited by Jerry Garrison and Phillip Percy, technical advisors from Jamesway, the company that built our new Incubators.  Jerry told me they are learning that the shell temperature is the important temperature, not incubator temperature.   And the reason you want to know the shell temperature is that closely follows the temperature of the embryo which should be stable throughout incubation.

We have single stage incubators for our duck and goose eggs, which means all the eggs in that machine are set to hatch on the same day.  We start the incubator temperature at 100.3 and by the time they start hatching it is set at 98.2.  But he said if we measured the shell temperature, it should always read about 100.2!

Why does the shell temperature differ from the incubator temperature?  Initially the embryo is very small and not generating any measurable heat.  But the egg shell is cooler than the incubator because small amounts of moisture are evaporating from the shell which cools it - just as our sweat cools us.  This water loss is normal as an egg loses 13-14% of its weight during incubation.

However, as the embryo grows, it starts generating more and more heat.  Eventually it is producing so much heat that it's shell temperature can be two degrees warmer than the air in the incubator.  The egg is warming the surrounding air - not vice versa.

So how do you know the shell temperature of incubating eggs?  You can get a infrared thermometer.  You can get inexpensive one for only $60 but they do not measure in 1/10's of a degree.  To measure as accurately as necessary you need to spend several hundred dollars.

The best way to maintain a constant shell temperature is to have a single stage incubator (only one age of eggs in the incubator).   To have a shell temperature of 100.2, you need it to be 100.3 in the beginning and then gradually reduce it until it is about 98.2 when they start hatching.  For more information on single stage incubation, click this link and select the third article.

If you are used to setting every week, how do you switch to single stage incubation?  You would need at least two incubators and set eggs every two weeks.  Your first egg set of the spring would be in one incubator.  Ten to fourteen days later (10 days if you are setting chicken eggs, 14 for ducks) you set all your eggs in the second incubator.  By rotating your egg set from one incubator to the other, you have created two single stage incubators!  Just be sure the incubator is capable of sufficient ventilation to cool itself when it is full of older, heat producing embryos.

The biggest advantage of the multi-stage incubator is that it is easy.  The disadvantage is the embryos will be slightly cool early in the incubation and slightly warm late in incubation.

I found the idea of a constant embryo temperature fascinating - and how that varies from the incubator temperature.  Do any of you have experience measuring shell temperatures or using single stage incubation?

Six Steps to Keep Ducks From Eating Their Eggs

Originally posted by John Metzer on Sat, Jan 08, 2011 @ 10:27 AM 

Some poultry develop a habit of eating freshly laid eggs. We have never seen it in geese but have with ducks. It can be prevented if you follow these steps, with the most important first.

1)  Have an adequate number of well bedded nest boxes. It is highly unlikely a duck will purposely break and eat an egg. Normally they acquire the taste when an egg is accidentally broken and they find they like the taste. So make sure you have enough nests (a minimum of one nest for every four females), your birds are not overcrowded (at least five square feet per bird) and each nest has at least two inches of wood shavings, sawdust, straw or hay in the bottom. It is important there is a 3-4” front on the nest so the bedding stays in the nest. We will discuss nest construction for ducks and geese in a future blog.  We have found the larger, clumsier ducks, such as Pekins, accidentally break and then eat more of their eggs than the lighter breeds.

2)  Pick up any broken eggs quickly and do not toss cracked or broken eggs back to your ducks.

3)  Make sure your ducks are getting a well balanced layer feed that has at least 3% calcium. And remember, by mixing chicken scratch with a balanced layer feed, you are making an unbalanced layer feed. The scratch adds carbohydrates but little protein and few minerals. If you are having an egg eating problem, buy some oyster shell at your local feed store and allow them to eat as much of that as they want. Just put it in a feeder and place it in a dry spot. They may eat more than they need but not enough to harm themselves.

4)  Remove the offending ducks. Watch your birds and see which are doing the breaking and eating. Any incriminating yolk on their bills?

5)  Give the birds other things to play with and eat instead of eggs. Put in chunks of vegetables: cabbage, lettuce, carrots, beets, potatoes, etc.
6)  The last alternative is using fake eggs. Some recommend putting golf balls in the nests. Ducks are not brilliant but I think they are smart enough to quickly learn they cannot eat a golf ball, then ignore it and continue eating eggs.

Besides losing good eggs, there are also health concerns for your birds if they continually eat raw eggs. An essential vitamin is biotin and eggs contain avidin, which binds and prevents the use of biotin. Cooking deactivates the avidin. But if your birds continually eat raw eggs, they may develop a biotin deficiency.

Some people have said to put hot pepper in an egg and the birds will learn to not eat broken eggs due to the pain from the peppers. The problem with this theory, however, is that peppers cause no discomfort to birds! They even put hot pepper in bird seed to prevent squirrels from eating it! In my research I did find there is a compound, methyl anthranilate, that birds detest. It is a naturally occurring compound that is found in concord grape skins and burns the pain receptors in birds just like hot peppers do us. It is used in all sorts of bird repellents but it is not sold in smaller, retail quantities. I wonder? Is there enough methyl anthranilate in grape juice to train ducks to not eat their eggs?

I ran an experiment by putting duck feed in two troughs. In one trough I poured water on the feed at one end of the trough and Welch's grape juice on the feed at the other end. On another feeder, I poured water on half and Grape Kool-Aid on the other. The result? All was equally eaten. If there was any methyl anthranilate in either product, there wasn't enough to bother the ducks! Of course, hungry ducks will eat most anything. It is like putting two kinds of feed in front of a hungry Black Lab (our dog). Everything will be eaten – taste does not enter into the equation!

So until someone can find something with adequate amounts of methyl anthranilate in it to put in “training” eggs, you will need to follow the six steps listed above to prevent your ducks from eating their eggs.