We have new additions to our little funny farm. The ducklings have hatched!

My sister brought me three dozen duck eggs a little over a month ago for me to try hatching duck eggs in our incubator. I did a little research and Lucian and I loaded them into the egg turner.

A few fun facts about duck eggs:

1. Duck eggs require a little more time to hatch then chicken eggs. Chicken eggs hatch at 21 days whereas duck eggs hatch at 28 days with the exception of Muscovy ducks which take 35 days.
2. They require extra moisture. Starting at about day 10 until day 25 the eggs either need to be sprayed with water or dunked to keep them moist enough. Think wet duck feathers setting on eggs in the wild.
3. Duck eggs need to be cooled off a bit each day starting at day 10 until day 25. I let them cool a bit at the same time I wetted them. Two birds with one stone.
4. Ducklings take longer to hatch then chicken eggs. I was concerned about this. I had about 7 eggs with cracked shells for DAYS! Chicks usually hatch within a day after the shell starts cracking. Apparently duck egg shells are much harder than chicken egg shells.

I started out with three dozen eggs at day 10 Lucian and Fiona helped me candle the eggs. There were 7 that were not developing so we tossed them. I candled them again at day 25 when I needed to take them out of the egg turner. Several were questionable but two were mostly blank so I left the two out. Exactly on day 28 I had a massive hatch-out of 6 ducklings almost together. After one hatches I believe the others here it cheering them on and the rest really start pushing. Two more hatched later that night and another two, with a little help, the next day. I only had one that started to hatch and didn’t make it. Ten healthy ducklings!

Lucian loved watching the ducklings hatch. We watched the first one together and he was cheering it on.

“I can see it’s feathers.”

“You can do it! Come on push!”

Fiona wanted to watch them all the time with her little nose pressed against the plexiglass of the incubator. We all love our little flock of ducklings.