How do I know if my duck eggs will hatch?
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More trustworthy than most men, dogs will never tell lies. When they point, they are pointing to the truth. We need more pointers and dogs that will find the truth and direct us to that truth. One can see the sincere concern for truth and accuracy in the eyes of these three dogs. They were raised to find the duck, taught that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it is, without a doubt, a duck………..
Question by sahrahng: How do I know if my duck eggs will hatch?
My family friend has ducks and chicken in his back yard and his family gave my family 6 fresh chicken eggs and 4 fresh duck eggs. I felt so bad about my family eating them (I’m a vegetarian, don’t eat eggs), and so I sneaked one duck egg out of the container… (my parents never noticed). I got the duck when it was relatively still warm on December 25, 08. Today is January 23, 2009. The egg still hasn’t hatched yet. Is it dead?
Feel free to answer in the comment section below
3 Responses to How do I know if my duck eggs will hatch?
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LOL. Oh dear.
Chicken and duck eggs (the kind you eat, that is) are infertile. An egg is a chickens period, it would never become a baby duckling, and even if it were fertile, it needs a perfect temperature range to hatch. Fertile eggs are the result of sex with a cockerel/drake duck and you dont usually eat them :p
angelicat
November 13, 2012 at 7:34 am
You would have had to have kept it at 99.9 degrees with no more then 1 degree of variation and have kept the humidity around 86%. You also would’ve had to turn the egg about 3-7 times per day while keeping the ‘big end’ up. That is, if the egg was even fertilized in the first place.
I keep laying hens and turkeys. It takes a decent incubator and careful monitoring to be able to hatch out a chick.
Typically, it’s best to start incubation within 15 days of the egg being layed, but, the best success rates are within the week it was laid. The egg doesn’t have to be kept warm until you actually start the incubation process. Once the incubation process has started, more then one degree of variation will start to harm or even kill chicks. A hen will lay eggs and accumulate them if she’s feeling ‘broody’. She won’t actually start incubating them by setting on them until she has all the eggs laid that she wants to hatch. Some hens don’t get broody and never try to hatch their eggs. I only have one hen right now that might even try to hatch her eggs.
If your family friend has birds that are allowed to free range, then that would be a good source for your family to get eggs from rather then buying them at a store from someone that raised them in battery cages. That’s why I have my own chickens, so that I know they are happy roaming the yard and eating bugs rather then buying the eggs of a hen that lives in a tiny cage her whole life.
We do eat fertile eggs, they taste exactly the same as regular eggs. Roosters help fend off predators because they are larger and protective of the hens, so it makes sense to keep a rooster even if you don’t plan to hatch out chicks.
Unknown....
November 13, 2012 at 7:35 am
Eggs, whether they are fertilized by a rooster (or drake, in this case) sit in a dormant state for about 10 days after they are laid. There is very little difference between a fertilized or unfertilized egg until the incubation process is started.
Eating an egg does not constitute “killing” a duck or a chick, so please don’t feel sorry for eggs that are being eaten. Even if the egg was fertilized (which typically doesn’t happen with ducks during winter months), viability of fertilized eggs is around 80%.
As long as eggs are collected daily and the hen or hen duck hasn’t started brooding, you can’t even tell which is which.
Fertilized duck eggs take about 28-31 days to hatch and require proper heating and humidity and need to be turned or they will not develop. Odds are, the egg you “rescued” was infertile and suitable for eating, but is now slowly becoming a stinky time bomb. I’d recommend tossing it out before it rots and explodes!
stonefieldhill
November 13, 2012 at 8:01 am