Duckies! A blog contribution from Emily

This post is by my sister Emily. Most of you know, she is an emergency room doctor and a mom of 4 young girls (Emily is nearly two decades younger than me). Here is her story about hatching baby ducklings.

I speciality ordered the duck eggs from a farm in Tennessee because I wanted this particular breed, dual purpose ducks that are calm and good with kids.

Duck eggs on arrival:

14 eggs arrived! Two were broken in transit, so 12 made it into my new incubator. 

Then after 10 days, you shine a light into the eggs called “candling” to see if they were fertilized. Only 7/12 were fertilized..no point incubating an unfertilized egg, so the rest were composted.

Then I started prepping their homemade brooder, this is iteration number three I think.

Here we go, this is the final DIY brooder.

I check frequently to make sure they are still growing.

Then I mark their air cell to make sure I have them positioned correctly for hatching.

You can see the little duck embryo moving inside! It’s called an internal pip where it breaks through into the inside air cell and starts to breathe before it breaks through the shell.

After it internally pips it only has 24 hours before it runs out of air and needs to break the external shell. I read that a lot of ducklings die this way if they aren’t able to do that first break, so at 18 hours I started making little safety holes in the eggs so none of them suffocated.

Only three of the seven had managed to break through the shell called the external pip.

24 hours later one of my eggs still hadn’t broken through the air cell.

I thought perhaps it had died, but then when I came home from work at midnight on Monday I saw a big bruise on the egg. I turned it over and saw that it managed to break through, but from the wrong side! It was completely upside down. And because of that it managed to break one of its own blood vessels and bleed everywhere. Duckie number one was going to become my patient.

The others all start to break through their top with my help.

You can see their little beaks breathing and chirping but they are not ready yet! They have to finish absorbing their yolk and the blood vessels need to recede so they can break out.

Rotating inside to get ready to push out:

Trying to break out:

At this point it is 2:00 am and I’m sitting in a chair in my nightgown in my bathroom.

He did it! Sometime around 4 am his peeping got louder because he was able to get his head free, and then he pushed himself out. 

This was the first ducky, number eight, and the remaining five healthy ones followed suit over the next 8 hours or so.

He’s trying to help.

And pretty soon it’s duckie mayhem in the incubator.

A couple still seem a little stuck, so I gently help those out too.

The first six are ready to go in their brooder!

And ducky number one got a very careful safety hole so I can watch his beak breathe, but I couldn’t make it bigger or he would bleed.

Number one still hasn’t made much progress.

I take a little shell off to check his yolk sac and blood vessels. Even though he’s now 12 hours behind the others, he’s still not ready yet. So I turn the incubator into his personal little hospital room.

Extra shell to protect the end I opened. 

Resting on a clean baby sock.

His breathing started to get really shallow. I decided to gently untwine his head so his breathing improved, but he still wasn’t ready to come out, so he gets a little hospital bed out of a plastic baby doorknob protector, and the sock is his pillow. This is probably at around 2:00 am last night, 24 hours since the first duckling fully hatched. 

Then I hear some louder peeping! He’s gotten himself out a few hours later. 

He’s really weak so I give him a little watermelon juice and water mixture for some sugar and electrolytes to try and perk him up.

I finally put him in the brooder with the others, and he’s in the back, snuggled up in the middle of the duck pile. 

Now I just have to make sure that this guy doesn’t get into my ducklings!

A couple of weeks ago he brought a robin in and eviscerated and defeathered it in my living room. 

So proud of his handiwork.

Turns out my nanny had accidentally left my door open so that’s how it happened. I had such a surprise when I came home from work.

Don’t worry, the duckies are protected behind three doors and a wire cage. I would lose my mind if the cat got the ducklings. They will be in the house for a while. And when they’re outside they’ll be fully penned/cooped because raccoons, foxes, coyotes and hawks could all take them out.

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

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