After having a very solid incubation success rate with our Blue Andalusians, we went ahead and began incubating a bunch of Khaki Campbell ducks. We had purchased our new farm, but were less than a month out from moving in. For the most part, we were overly enthusiastic and were making every effort to prep for our transition to a full homestead!
Soon thereafter, I (again, being overly ambitious!) purchased some bantam eggs online. In the end, we had around 2 dozen eggs, half duck/half bantam, all “scheduled” to hatch the same day. For reasons that I am still unsure about, the thermometer in the incubator began giving wildly varying reports, on random days. These reports caused me to make adjustments to the incubator (sometimes drastic, in retrospect), to attempt to keep the temperature hovering around 100 degrees.
In addition (yet another variable), I removed some plugs on the incubator (per incubator instructions) once the first hatchings started. This definitely ended up drying out a few of my eggs (the ducks had broken the shell, but the membrane dried up too hard for them to make it through.)
The end result was that 7 our of 12 ducks hatched (most 3 days early!) and only 1 bantam hatched. This was one of my worst runs with the incubator and, given the evidence (early hatching), I believe that I had it too hot for sure, for the vast majority of this run. And, it seems that the last week was really off – at that point, the ducks had over 3 weeks of “slightly hot” incubation and appear to have survived it. But, the chickens had only had 2 weeks before the “bad” week came on and they did not do as well. Another possible miss might be that you simply can’t try duck and chicken eggs together. I know that eggs begin to give off heat at various stages of incubation and maybe the ducks did the chickens in.
The end result is one very special Bantam (I have contacted the folks who sold me the eggs to get the exact variety) and seven ducklings. If you have never raised ducklings, they are the messiest (or nastiest, as my daughter would say) little things. They throw the water everywhere and pretty much turn their brooder into a muddy mess very quickly. Watching Pipsqueak (the name we gave to the Bantam) amongst those nasty ducklings caused me to do what I have never done before – I purchased some chicks (more bantams, to be precise.) I normally only incubate eggs for new fowl, just to reduce the risk of bringing a disease on from another farm.
And thus, the “Toddlers” were formed. Pipsqueak with some Bantam crosses (Game Bantams x Appenzeller spitzhauben). As with our Blue Andalusians, we have too many roosters with this crew, so I will need to begin thinning them out a bit. My pop may take one or two for their funny look and hopefully I can sell or give away a couple before Winter. Next Spring, I hope to raise some more of Pipsqueak’s kind and begin selling them from the Homestead.