The Hatch

I almost forgot to post this!

It takes ducklings 28 days of incubation to hatch.

We set 7 eggs, the max our incubator holds.

When we candled them at 10 days only four were growing.

For four weeks I checked the water level and made sure each egg was rolling.

On the 26th day, we found an egg that had pipped.

Pipping is when the duckling makes it's first crack in the shell.

We were so excited!

By the end of the 26th day there were two eggs with pips.

Slowly, on the 27th day, the other two eggs had pips too.

We went to bed that night with nothing hatched.

We woke up Sunday, day 28, to find not one, but two had hatched!

It seemed that this one was the first to come out as he was a little drier than the other one.

This one we think hatched just before we got up.

The two little ducklings moved around a lot once they got their sea legs under control.

The snuggled up together.

It was quite funny how they would move around and then suddenly go to sleep.

Like someone turned off their power.

It's hard work hatching out of that egg.

(Not to mention gross, messy, and stinky.)

Here is the third egg cracking open an escape hatch.

It's called zipping when the duckling cracks around to make an opening.

Once they have the egg fairly cracked they push their way out.

It's quite an amazing process to watch.

It's an exhausting journey.

Here is the yellow duckling almost dried off.

They are supposed to stay in the incubator until the last hatched one is dry.

Yay! The fourth and final egg is starting to zip.

It was very crowded in our little incubator and we decided to remove the hatched ones.

We had the duck tank ready for the new little ducklings.

We set up a screen divider to separate the older ducklings from the younger ones.

The older ones are about 2 1/2 weeks older. It's hard to believe how fast they grow!

They are very curious about each other and spend a lot of time side by side.

We were hoping moving the hatched ducklings would

give the last egg a better chance at hatching.

This last one kind of stalled out.

We waited all day. It didn't seem like it was making very good progress.

This last egg reminded me of our failed eggs from last year.

I was trying not to get bummed.

It would stick his bill out the hole and then not move.

I honestly had given up on this one.

Then late that evening he began to make progress.

All four of us were able to watch it hatch out of the egg.

It was quite cool to see.

So all four of our fertilized eggs made it to hatching!

All four seem to be healthy.

Connor named the yellow one Banana.

Oh, and the last one that hatched we've named Pokey... since he was such a slow poke to hatch.

He's the one on the left.

He has a two toned head. It will be interesting to see how they feather out.

All of the darker ones stand upright when they run.

We're still not sure what the yellow one is.