Beginner’s Guide to Incubating and Hatching Duck Eggs
Incubating and hatching duck eggs is so much fun and relatively easy! They are a little bit more complicated than chicken eggs, but if you follow this simple guide you should have a great hatch of adorable baby ducks in 28 days.
Where to Get Duck Hatching Eggs
From a Hatchery
Several hatcheries offer hatching eggs available for order online. These will usually run you upwards of $40 a dozen and they do not offer a viability promise. This means you have no idea what amount of eggs are actually going to hatch.
This is not my preferred method of getting hatching eggs, not worth the expense/risk.
On Facebook
Facebook might be seen as the old person’s social media, but in terms of buying and selling from neighbors it’s hard to find a better resource. Check first with local homesteading groups, small farm groups, etc. in your area.
You might be able to find hatching eggs on marketplace, but Facebook has some weird rules about not selling animals or animal products. Some things people still seem to be able to sell on there, other times they get a facebook slap on the wrist.
In Person
You might be surprised that a friend of a friend has ducks! Or you can ask around the vendors at your local farmers market or co-op. There’s no guarantee what breeds of ducks you will find this way, but odds are good that someone in your area will provide a lead on where to find hatching eggs.
Important Qualities of a Good Hatching Egg
Fertile
You would think it goes without saying but I will emphasize this here, you must have a male duck (drake) in with the females to get fertile hatching eggs. You would want a flock with about one drake to every six hens in order for them to lay mostly fertile eggs
Uncracked
The eggs should be solid with no cracks or funky qualities to them.
Dirt is Fine
With chicken hatching eggs you want to make sure you have perfectly clean eggs. Dirty eggs can carry bacteria which might affect the hatch rate of chickens.
With ducks it isn’t such a big deal, as the egg shells are quite a bit tougher than a chicken’s egg. Most duck breeds tend to lay eggs willy nilly so it is more challenging to get clean ducks eggs anyway.
Not Frozen or Too Hot
Eggs that have been below freezing or have been sitting out in very hot temps for an extended period are not ideal. They should be collected within a couple hours of laying for the best hatch rate.
One Week Old Max
Hatching eggs should be no more than one week old. You can hatch slightly older eggs, but the success rate for your hatch will drop significantly.
Selecting an Incubator
I have the Nurture Right Harvest Pro Incubator (Note that is an affiliate link so if you do purchase it I get a small kick back. Always shop local when you can though!) and I really like it. This incubator only holds twenty-two eggs as opposed to the forty-four a larger, styrofoam-based, incubator can hold. Still, I think this size is perfect for the small farm or homestead.
When choosing an incubator, here are a few things I would look for.
Button Temperature Controls
Older and less expensive models of the big foam ones have a metal lever you move ever so slightly to set the temperature. These are trickier to get the incubator to the correct and consistent temperature. I like an incubator with simple buttons like a tiny thermostat.
Humidity Gauge
This measure the relative humidity in the incubator so you can make sure it stays where it should throughout the incubation process. I appreciate an incubator that offers multiple ways of humidity control (like the NurtureRight 360 – see my review here).
This isn’t a deal breaker as you can buy small humidity meters for cheap. It is still nice to have this built right into the machine if possible.
For success with hatching duck eggs I highly recommend investing in a humidity gauge, as the humidity level is going to greatly affect how well your eggs hatch.
Automatic Egg Turner
Most units come with an automatic turner, but it is a good thing to double check before purchasing if it is sold separately or not. You can hand turn the eggs a few times a day but I advise against this. For one, it’s a pain to turn eggs all the time for a month.
Two, the eggs tend to roll around and move and can crack each other.
Lastly, it will throw off the humidity and temperature several times a day. A key to a successful incubation period is to try and emulate the behavior of a broody duck, keeping the eggs at a fairly constant state as much as possible.
Size of the Egg Turner
I was lucky that the Silver Appleyard eggs I was hatching were able to fit easily in the slots of the egg turner. Some duck eggs though will be much larger, and you might need to buy an additional turner for your incubator that has larger spots for the duck eggs.
Forced-Air Incubator vs. Still-Air Incubators
Most incubators these days are forced air, where there is a small fan to help circulate the warm air evenly around the eggs. Still air incubators are not as efficient, so you likely won’t even see one. But just in case, it is good to be aware.
Cleanability
Part of why I like the Nurture Right 360 is because of the ease in cleaning. After years of cleaning four foam incubators each spring, I never felt like they really truly got clean. The plastic is much easier to scrub out.
Watch for their Feet
I only have to complaints about this incubator, one being that a duck’s little webbed foot got down the side of the hatching platform and got stuck there. I had to help pull it out. It all was fine in the end but something to watch for.
Setting Up the Incubator
Location
Select a location for your incubator that is somewhere you are often. I like to use a kitchen counter. You will want to monitor your eggs, especially the humidity, daily. Don’t stick them in the basement or some mostly unused guest room where you might forget about them for a day.
Do not put them anywhere in a window where the sun might spike the temperature or drafts might chill it.
Test Run
The first step in starting incubation is a test run. Add water to your incubator per its instructions. They all are a little different so consult your manual. Close it up and plug it in, letting in run a full 24 hours before you plan to use it. This allows you to stabilize the temperature and humidity before adding the eggs.
The proper temperature should be at 99.5 F and a humidity right around 55%.
Add The Duck Eggs
Place the eggs in your incubator! It’s harder with duck eggs than chicken eggs to tell which way is the pointy direction, but do your best to determine this. On the round style incubator like mine, they points should all face towards the center.
If it is a turning tray that actually hold the eggs in them, put the pointy side down.
If the turner is fairly flat and the eggs lay on their sides all in a row, do the pointy side away from you.
Candling Eggs
It takes 28 days for duck eggs to start hatching. For us it was a full 30 before they all were out.
You will want to candle the eggs three times before what we call “lock down”. Please check out the YouTube video above to see how this is done.
Around days 7-10, candle all the eggs. This involves placing an egg on an egg candler or other source of light to look inside the egg. You should see blood vessels beginning to develop. There is usually also a dark spot where you can see the developing embryo, namely the eye.
Repeat the candling process around day 15, and then one last time on day 25 or 26 before the eggs hatch.
Any eggs that do not show vessels, or they just look off, that means they are not viable and should be discarded. If you leave those eggs in there, they can start to rot and explode, creating a huge mess in there for you and the eggs still hoping to hatch.
You should expect several “bad eggs” in your batch so don’t worry too much. Usually this isn’t due to human error, it is simply something was funky with the egg and it wasn’t meant to develop.
As a general rule you can expect around 50-60% for an average duck egg hatch. Large commercial incubators see higher hatch rates in the 90% range.
We were able to achieve a 70% hatch rate with these methods.
Water Spritz
For a higher hatch rate, I recommend doing a daily cooling and spritzing. What this requires is once a day you remove the cover of the incubator and let the eggs cool to room temperature for 15-30 minutes.
Then, use a spray bottle and sort of mist the eggs. You don’t need much water, just a light misting.
I use room temperature water.
Put the incubator lid back on and repeat this process once a day from day eight to day twenty five.
The point of this is that a mother duck in the wild usually leaves the nest once a day and will come back wet from a swim. This is supposed to mimic the cooling and extra direct moisture the fertile duck egg shell would get from their mom.
Lock Down
On day 26 in the morning, remove the egg turner and if you like give the eggs one last spritz. They turner needs to come out as the ducks need to stay still to orient themselves towards hatching. The turner also can cause injuries to their little legs as they get all tangled up.
The lid of the incubator will have some sort of an air vent or plug. Either remove the plug or open the air vent all the way.
You will also add more water to the incubator to increase the humidity to 75%. Temperature stays the same. Maintain that high humidity for the remainder of the hatch.
Hatching Time
The first time I hatched ducks I was such a wreck! They take forever to hatch compared to chicken eggs.
A duckling in the egg will puncture the air sac, then poke a first hole out of the egg, also called a “pip” or “pipping”. From the first pip to fully hatching it out can take 12-48 hours. Just be patient.
After the first pip, and usually many hours, the duckling will begin to poke a series of small holes all around the shell. This is called “unzipping” When unzipping starts, the duckling is usually out within an hour.
After the duckling has fully hatched they will sleep a lot. Hatching out of an egg is as lot of work! Let them rest and dry completely. They can be in the incubator for up to 24 hours.
Moving to the Brooder
After you have had a successful hatch, it is time to move each newly hatched duckling to their brooder.
Wait until you have at least one other duckling that is hatched and dried so you can move them into their new home together. This helps them stay calm and they can keep warm next to a buddy.
It is best to only open the incubator when you have to, as continuing to lift the lid will throw off the humidity, making it more difficult for the ducks still in the process of hatching to get out.
Say for example you have a duck that hatched at 8:00 am in the morning. By 5:00pm that same day you have two ducklings that have pipped and are working on hatching.
Even though your first duckling to hatch could go in the incubator, wait the full 24 hours until the next morning. Chances are good the other ducklings will have already hatched, be dry, and you can move them all together.
Brooding Your Healthy Ducklings
This is a whole other can of worms, but the quick version is you will need a secure place with a heat source (heat lamp or heat plate), appropriate food, and plenty of fresh water for the ducklings ready when hatching starts.
Please note, young ducklings should not be able to get fully in water as they can get chilled easily and this can be fatal.
Final Thoughts
We really had great success hatching our ducks this way. The entire process isn’t too complicated, it just takes time and attention to get a good hatch rate.
If you are new to hatching ducks and have any questions I am happy to help! Drop a comment below or you can always reach out on social media. Best of luck to you and your future ducklings!
