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Problems in Muscovy Duck Eggs

Hatchability Problems in Muscovy Duck Eggs and Artificial Insemination Process

Published: February 12, 2009
By: Ibrahim Ahmed
When a problem occurs in hatchability, usually it can be categorized as a hatchery, egg handling, or breeder flock problem.
If the problem has originated within the breeder flock, it is probable that it happened at least 6 weeks earlier, assuming 5 weeks of incubation and 1 week of egg storage.
This delay in identifying a problem is costly and may even make it impossible to determine the cause if the effect is of short duration. It is necessary to identify the problem as early as possible, using candling at 2 week of incubation and constantly monitoring unhatched eggs, to minimize the delay in taking corrective measures. Analysis of hatch debris does not yield definitive diagnoses.
Many factors can affect the hatchability, including health of the breeders, Derszy disease, feed quality, etc... But if you have a problem with Derzsy or health of breeder, you will be able to observ these problems on egg production rate at first.
So, do you have specific problems in egg production rate on your breeder?

In addition, your fertility should be also affected if you had health problems on the breeder ducks, and it seems that you have no problem on fertility at this moment. At this stage, and with the problem on hatchability only as we can see. We can think mainly about problems with incubation and hatching.


1st hypothesis: Humidity level in your setters:

The problem of late mortality on embryos is generally due to a problem in humidity management during incubation. It would be interesting to check again on your side, on automatic controls and on manual controls (wet bulb thermometers) if your humidity rate in setters is right or not!

In addition, and still in order to control the right level of humidity in your setter, we can strongly suggest you to check the egg weight loss on eggs during incubation.
For that, you have to weight 3 or 4 egg trays of each flock of origin before incubation and every week during incubation, always at the same time every week, in order to check the egg weight loss during incubation.

In Muscovy ducks, the eggs should loose 2,8% of their weight regularly every week of incubation.

If the eggs loose less weight than 2,8% every week, it means that the humidity is too high in your setters. If the eggs loose more weight than 2,8% every week, it means that the humidity is too low in your setters.
In both cases, the ducklings will be weak at the end of the incubation period, and they will not be able to pip the eggs, or they will not be able to hatch even if they start piping their egg shell. You could have good control of humidity before, and now, because of change of temperature or humidity in the climate, it could have some big influence on the situation of humidity in your own setters. That's why it is normal to adapt the humidity sometimes in your setters, according to the season.


Other hypothesis: Humidity in your hatchers:

Wrong humidity in your hatchers can also explain this type of situation. For that, you just have to check your equipments in order to be sure that they are in good order.
Of course, you can not control the egg weight loss during this stage.

By weighing the eggs, you could be able to adapt the right humidity rate in your setters within 2 or 3 weeks of control of egg weight, and come back then to the right humidity parameters and right hatchability rate after these 3 weeks of control. It means that, if the problem is really coming from a wrong humidity rate in your setter, you could come back to better results in hatchability within 4 weeks from now, if you start of course very soon the egg weight control.
The Process of Artificial Insemination in Ducks
1 - Semen Collection and Processing
Hatchability Problems in Muscovy Duck Eggs and Artificial Insemination Process - Image 1
Hatchability Problems in Muscovy Duck Eggs and Artificial Insemination Process - Image 2
Hatchability Problems in Muscovy Duck Eggs and Artificial Insemination Process - Image 3 


2 - Insemination
Hatchability Problems in Muscovy Duck Eggs and Artificial Insemination Process - Image 4
Hatchability Problems in Muscovy Duck Eggs and Artificial Insemination Process - Image 5 
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Authors:
ibrahim ahmed
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Maheswar Rath
25 de marzo de 2013

I have gone through the articles and photos provided. Habitability and gestation period of hatching eggs is mostly related to god given chromosome numbers and mostly body wt of the species. Artificial insemination in poultry is very successful in chicken and mostly in commercial AI system in layers and broiler there is no need for dilution of semen as sufficient males are preserved for the purpose. In poultry the proper diluent for expanding the volume is getting in to complicate situations. Again the AI methods ie collection of semen and insemination are also needed good handling practices.

In this article the author has deliberately not mentioned what is their hatch ability results in details. The results would suggest what to do next? For any efficient hatching performance number of factors are involved including breeder management to handling of incubators. Even hatching egg handling also impact results.

When we know the Muscovy ducks are heavier ducks it takes around 35 days for completing hatching unlike lighter ducks. There is good scope for the author to spell out the detail results of hatching per batch then only some debate can be made. thank you sir. dr m rath

Nezar Alfaqeeh
25 de marzo de 2013

Thank you for this information but I want to know the duck eggs specific pathogen free (SPF eggs) or not? using for production of vaccine or For hatching ??. Anyway need fumigation for eggs before incubation process. Avoid placing eggs contaminated with the outer shell a lot and broken and candling for eggs daily after 6 to 7 days from incubation discard the infertile and contamination this procedure low level of contamination.

Rancho Veterinario
16 de octubre de 2012

Thank you for this interesting article. Do you have information about level of contamination in the incubation process in ducks? I have a friend that washes the eggs for hatching and we are having high level of contamination. How do you handle the dirt on the eggs coming from the floor and nest?

Cesar Lopez
4 de agosto de 2011

Thank you for your valuable information. I wonder if it's possible you provide information about the protocol of incubation of Muscovy duck eggs (temperature, humidity, turning, cooling, etc.).

Argelio Lecea
Argelio Lecea
23 de marzo de 2011
Where can I buy the necessary equipment to do artificial insemination?
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