Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Mamma duck was sitting on eggs when male tried to mate with her, big scene ensued, 4 eggs broke but 10 were fine. She sat on them again the next day for only a few hours and then abandoned them because nest started to smell from the ones that broke. My question is, can these 10 remaining be incubated if they were already being sat on and then were abandoned for approx 48 hours (temp fluctuations)? Also, wouldn't some bacteria from the broken eggs have transferred through the shells, possibly contaminating the 10 that were not broken?

You might try washing the eggs in luke warm, mild detergent water and then put them in the incubator. I don't know if you'll have any luck, but you can try. I would also recommend candling the eggs to see if you can tell if they are developing. Do you know how old the eggs are? I don't have Muscovy's so I'm not sure about how long they typically take to hatch. Good luck & let the board know of the outcome.

GrammaDuck

Hey,

Muscovy duck eggs normally take 35 days to incubate (the same as geese), good luck.

Mel x

Well, it's not looking good, sad to say. I did bring eggs in, washed them properly, purchased incubator, etc. Besides first having suffered the trauma of being bandied about in the nest during the squabble between the male and Momma duck, then the eggs were jostled in the incubator when my son accidentally slid a large footstool into the table holding the incubator. Then I had to leave for a week so purchased an egg turner for the incubator and had to leave my hubby to set it up and he put all the eggs in the turner large end DOWN (instead of up), PLUS we had a power failure that same week I was gone and hubby can't remember how long the electricity was out. I came back this weekend past, and the incubator is starting to smell. I tried candling some tonight but I honestly don't know what I'm looking at and when I checked a few web sites for reference pictures, none of them made sense, bad and good looked the same to me, one site had completely opposite info from another. I got frustrated and gave up. All I know is there is a bad smell coming from the incubator which cannot be a good sign.....question is: are they all bad? only one? a few? Arghhhhhhhh.

HI,
Try this web site. It is what I used to help me understand the incubation, candling, and hatching process. Good luck!
http://www.minkhollow.ca/HatchingProgram/HANDBOOK.htm#3.1
Link

Thanks, GrammaDuck....but that IS the site I was talking about. She only has info there for the first week of incubation which I'm past, and the candling movies she has there (only for first week anyway) all look the same to me. I'm going to try the water test today (rottens sink/ok's float: that's what I read in some Agricultural PhD's paper).
Sorry to hear about your duck and the snapper. I didn't know they attack adults either....and we have lots of snappers in our lake. I've seen them grab babies but never adults.