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Incubation and rearing young

Hatching ducklings and goslings under a broody and in an incubator day by day, with the brooder, water and the first trip out to grass

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Incubation and rearing young

In short

  • Incubation lasts: duck 28 days, goose 28–32 (roughly 30), Muscovy 35.
  • Hatching eggs: clean, no more than 7 days old, stored at 12–15 °C (54–59 °F).
  • Fan incubator: 37.5 °C (99.5 °F), humidity 55–60 %, the last 3 days 70–80 %.
  • From day 10 cool waterfowl eggs and mist them lightly once a day.
  • The young need 28–32 °C (82–90 °F) under the heat source in the first week; roughly 3 °C less each week.
  • No swimming until 3–4 weeks without a mother: ducklings get chilled and drown.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. Broody or incubator
  2. Hatching eggs: choosing and storing
  3. Natural hatching
  4. Incubator: settings by species
  5. Day by day
  6. Candling
  7. When the hatch fails
  8. Brooder: the first weeks
  9. Water, feed and going outside
  10. Sexing, marking and young males
  11. Common mistakes
  12. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Incubation log
  • Candling and hatch results
  • Hatching calculator
  • Brooder log
  • Hatching and rearing calendar
  • Shopping list for hatching

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

This guide in other languages:

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