We have had our first baby ducks hatching. As you know we are a family farm and as such we have farm animals. Many of our beloved farm animals and pets have been seen in our other talks. We use our pets and farm animals for show-and-tell.

Well today, we have baby ducks hatching. This is our first time to hatch our own baby ducks and Popi is very proud of his Grand-Ducks.

Ducks are as easy as chickens to keep. The only difference is that ducks do require a larger water source than chickens to be happy. Yes, ducks want to swim, splash, and dive. But other than the need for a pond of some kind, ducks are just like chickens. Ducks also eat a lot of bugs and weeds, which is a gold star for ducks in our opinion.

The ducks we have are Khaki Campbell, they do not usually set and hatch on their own. So how did they ever survive in the wild, you ask? Good question. This breed is actually a man-made breed, created by mixing two other duck lines. We will not weigh in on that in this talk.

Anyway, we hatched baby ducks in an incubator. When we last used this incubator we were hatching baby chicks and quinea keets.

Please feel free to hop over and take a look at It Is Spring: Time for Chicks.

Chickens and ducks are similar but also very different to hatch in an incubator. The process is the same to start off with.

It is best to set up the incubator a day or so before you want to put eggs in it. This will give the incubator time to get up to the correct heat and moisture and give you time to adjust it if needed.

The temp in the incubator is the same for most birds at 99.8 F.

Be sure to keep the heat right. Too little heat and your eggs will not hatch, they will just go bad inside your incubator. That is totally something you do not ever what to have to clean up. Too much heat and you will basically bake your eggs. That is also not a good smell.

Ducks and even Geese require more moisture to hatch properly than chicks and keets do. Chickens and keets require approximately 55% humidity, whereas ducks and geese need approximately 65% to 75% humidity. This is just a quick range for you. There are some details that need to be looked at. Eggs need a different humidity at different times in the hatching process but this is a good start. If you are planning to hatch for yourself be sure to check for the exact details on when to change the humidity levels.

All incubators come with a bottom tray with canals in it. This is where you put the water every day or so to keep the moisture level in the incubator right for the specific type of bird you are hatching. Do not ever put the eggs directly into water, the water will soak through the shell and drown the baby inside. Note, that all bird eggs will need some humidity. So do be sure you know what your kind of bird eggs will need before you start.

What we have learned in researching duck hatching, before we started, was it is best to start spritzing your duck eggs about day 10 in the incubation process. This will give the duck eggs the extra moisture they need as they grow. A quick daily spritz should keep your duck eggs happy.

The moisture inside the incubator is very important. If there is not enough moisture, the eggs may start to dry out and the babies may die.

In the “real world,” a mama duck would keep the moisture and heat correct herself by manual work. Mama duck sits on the eggs to keep them at the right temp. Mama Duck will also get off the eggs for a little bit every day so that she can eat and drink. There is no sense in mama duck sitting so long that she gets sick herself. How can she take care of her eggs and eventually her babies if she is sick? So while mama duck is off her eggs for a bit, she will go to her water source to drink and bathe. Mama Duck will then come back to her eggs and sit back down on them. But mama duck is now wet and this is the water that she uses to keep the egg’s moisture right. With mama duck wet and sitting on the eggs, she makes a natural incubator to keep the heat and moisture just right for her eggs. Is it not incredible how nature does things just right by instinct?

Put your clean but not washed eggs into the incubator. Do check to be sure your eggs are clean and intact. If there are any cracks or holes in the eggs, they will ooze out of the shell when heated. Also, not good.

It is best to put some kind of mark on each egg. This will help you when you are turning the eggs to know which ones you have already turned at that time. Use a pencil not ink, the ink may soak into the shell and harm the baby inside.

Now, you wait and pamper your eggs. Chicken and Quinea eggs need to be turned once a day but duck eggs like to be turned at least three or four times a day.

The reason you must turn the eggs is if the egg is not turned or not turned enough, the baby duck inside the egg may get stuck to the side of the shell. Yes, that is as bad as it sounds. The baby duck may die inside the shell, that is sad. But what is worse, is if your baby duck gets all the way to hatching and is stuck to the shell, it will not be able to hatch properly. The baby duck can have all kinds of terrible birth defects if it is stuck to its shell.

No matter what the issue, the baby will usually not get over it. So be sure you make time to turn your eggs and keep the moisture right.

As the old saying goes, Patience is a Virtue. Chickens take 21 days to hatch. Ducks take 32 days from start to finish to hatch. You must take care of them every day, several times a day actually, to be sure you will hatch happy, healthy baby ducks.

While you wait, you can do what is called “candling the egg”. Basically, you use a very bright flashlight to shine through the shell to see what is inside. It is not a perfect method and it is not all telling but it will give you an indication of the egg’s progress.

The candling can show the egg yolks, the whites, sometimes you can see veins in the egg and sometimes you can see a form. However, you do not have to candle your eggs, you can just wait and see but for the less patient of us, we want to watch the progress. And it is fun for the kids to see and it also makes a great lesson for the kids to “See” the growing process for themselves.

These eggs were candled very early in the incubation so there is not really much to see.  You can see the egg parts, and it is still cool.

For the next 32 days, we wait, roll the eggs three or four times a day, and spritz them daily after day 10. It is not all that fascinating but it is necessary to get the happy, healthy, little fuzzies we are hoping for.

So when the day comes, the fun begins. The first baby duck will start to punch through the shell with its little beak. It can take anywhere from an hour to 48 hours for a baby to make its way out of the shell.

As an excited new duckling parent, it is tempting to try to help them but do not do that. It is important for the baby duck to work up its strength and endurance by “fighting” its way out of the shell. If you try to help the baby get out of the shell, you may hurt the baby or even kill it. So be patient and wait for the baby to work things out for themselves.

Unfortunately, sometimes the baby duck is too weak and will not be able to get out of the shell. These babies will die. There is no telling why this happens but it does. It is very sad, after growing and waiting all that time. But sometimes it just happens. Again, you may want to help the duckling out of the egg. Just note that if you do, it is still most likely that the duckling will not live long. We waited until it was obvious that the baby could not get out and that it was going to die to try to help. But it has never gone well. The weak one just dies, that is also a thing of nature to be sure the healthy survive. It is natural but it is still very sad. So be sure before you decide to start hatching your own babies of any kind, that you understand you may lose some and there is nothing that you will be able to do about that.

We are not trying to discourage you from hatching your own birds, far from it, but we do want you to be aware of how things work, and know about things that can go wrong, and we want you to be prepared for these things. It is always best to know what you are getting into before you start.

And here we have our first baby ducks hatching.

Out of the seven eggs that we started with, we ended up with four healthy ducklings.

The other three eggs were not fertile so they never did anything. As our adult ducks are just over a year old, it is not unusual for some of the eggs to not be fertile. It seems that ducks are just a bit harder or require more detail to hatch than chickens and guineas do.

We did try hatching some goose eggs but none of those eggs were good so we got nothing but bad eggs and a funky incubator for our troubles there. For the goose eggs, we will have to wait until the geese are older. Geese, ducks, and peafowl seem to need to be a good bit older than chickens to start laying and hatching. A chicken can start laying eggs at around seven months depending on the kind of chicken but ducks and geese need to be over a year. Peafowl need to be over three years before you can be sure they will have good eggs. Guess size does matter sometimes.

Well, here we have our first baby ducks hatching. We hope you have enjoyed this show-and-tell talk. If you have a backyard farm, you might want to try your hand at baby ducks hatching.  It is fun and educational for the kids.

Oh, and did we mention, that Khaki Campbell ducks lay an egg a day just like chickens? Well, they do. If chickens are not your thing, maybe ducks are.

In case you are considering taking on ducks or if you already have some, check out our Duck Journal in the Out Standing in the Field Store. There are general information pages, chore charts, Flock logs, and some really cute graphics that we made just for this journal. This journal will help you keep track of all your duck needs, duties, and numbers. This is the exact journal that Grammy uses for her ducks.

Thank you for visiting and please come again for another edition of Out Standing in the Field.