![]() After the ducks began hatching, we covered these with rags to keep the ducklings from getting burned on the jars. To maintain the temperature we were aiming for, we filled one quart and one pint mason jar with boiling water and placed them in the incubator. If replicating in a cooler, placing a straw out the hole and wrapping the rest in blankets will help, but you’ll be opening it every few hours so that will keep fresh air coming in. Earlier in the day when the room temperature was lower, I wrapped the incubator with blankets to help hold in heat, leaving the top air hole open. Using the cooking thermometer, I continued to monitor the temperature. I laid these down on opposite sides of the incubator and closed the lid. I unplugged it and maintained heat by boiling water and placing it in mason jars with tight lids. Our incubator fan worked, but it produced no heat, so it merely served to increase temperature fluctuations and muck things up. With the humidity under control, the next step is maintaining temperature of around 90 degrees. The first pips occurring 10 days after we found the cold nest. Here’s a thorough writeup on hatching humidity combined with a sensor you’ll eliminate the guesswork. If you have moisture pooling at the top of your makeshift hatching area, you need to reduce the humidity. When working out humidity, volume of water is not important surface area is. Place that over some lids with water in them. Without the incubator, I would get something like my Excalibur dehydrator tray mesh sheets that allow airflow but secure footing for hatching chicks and ducks. I filled the appropriate channels for hatching to keep the humidity up. We have a Hovabator incubator (aff) with the channeled humidity tray beneath where the eggs go. You just need a way to keep heat and moisture in, but with the ability to vent excess moisture out. It could easily be replicated with a styrofoam cooler or even a standard plastic cooler. Here is where our non working incubator came in handy. Hatching, though, posed a new problem – how could they hatch layered under the weight of the rags and blanket? Hallelujah! The next day, there were three pipped eggs. We incubated them for 10 days, caring for them four times per day, swapping out wet rags to keep the humidity level up.ĭespite all odds, I heard peeping one night when I was giving them the last wet rag at bedtime. In this article, I will lay out the process that happened to transition them to our non working incubator shell and hatch successfully. ![]() In the last article, I talked about how we were able to incubate our 25-day-old duck eggs after their mother was killed, using only a heat pad and some elbow grease.
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