Rules and recommendations for ovoscoping duck eggs by day
Every poultry breeder should know the peculiarities of the care and breeding of poultry if he wants his farm to prosper. In order for the incubation process to be as efficient as possible, you should know how to properly ovoscopy duck eggs every day. Ovoscopy is the examination of eggs for the presence of an embryo in them. The procedure is performed using an ovoscope. You can buy it in the store or build it yourself.
Ovoscopy of duck eggs by day
Features of the procedure
Duck eggs do not need to be ovoscoped daily. This frequency increases the risk of injury. Based on the experience of many generations of poultry farmers, it makes sense to conduct four inspections.
The best option is to look at the presence of the embryo before incubation, and then 3 more times throughout the entire incubation period to make sure that the development process is proceeding correctly. Such a system of inspections will allow solving two pressing issues at once: determining the quality of eggs and preserving the brood.
initial stage
Ovoscoping duck eggs at the initial stage implies the distribution of quality materials and screening of rejects. Experienced poultry farmers strongly recommend not to abandon the culling procedure in order to avoid a decrease in incubation efficiency. What factors can determine a defective egg:
- shell spotting - this color indicates a lack of Ca or an excess of it;
- when the presence of blood formations is visible;
- pathological parameters of the air cavity;
- dark spots are most often a signal that mold flora has developed;
- catatonia of the yolk most often indicates that it is stuck to the shell;
- white stripes - evidence of micromechanical damage;
- if there are no clearly defined boundaries of the yolk, most often in such cases it is mixed with the protein due to its rupture.
In addition, you should not put an egg in the incubator in which two yolks are visible. To fully understand how to perform culling, you can take a closer look at the process in the videos on this topic. After control transillumination, eggs should be placed in the incubator.
Second transillumination
At the second stage, you need to pay attention to the development of the embryo. When ovoscoping, the egg should turn pink. The embryo itself should not yet be clearly visible due to the fact that it is still inside the yolk. There should be no blood rings around the yolk. The circulatory system of the chick can be clearly seen. All of these signs will indicate normal fetal development.
If ovoscopy shows signs such as the absence of a circulatory system of the duck embryo, its close location to the shell, and the color of the egg is very close to transparent, it can be concluded that the likelihood of fetal underdevelopment is increased.The second ovoscopy is carried out on the 8th day of incubation, approximately at the same time, the procedure for viewing goose eggs is carried out.
Control at the third stage
The third ovoscopy is performed 5 days after the last one. This procedure makes it possible to clearly see the growing duck embryo. This stage allows us to draw final conclusions about the prospects for further development. You need to pay attention to the activity of the embryos. If the embryo does not move, such an egg should be removed, and the remaining ones should be folded back into the incubator.
Signs of embryo death:
- immobility;
- underdevelopment of the vascular system;
- an increase in the air cavity.
The fourth stage of transillumination
The last transillumination of duck eggs is carried out on the 25th day from the beginning of incubation, a couple of days before the chicks are born. The same rules apply to goose eggs, with the only difference that they are looked at on the 29th day. This stage allows you to determine the readiness of duck embryos for birth.
The last transillumination allows you to reject the dead at the final stage of embryo development. What an egg looks like at the last stage under an ovoscope:
- the clearance is almost zero;
- the air cavity is clearly visible;
- the embryo is almost fully developed.
Why chicks freeze
There are many reasons that negatively affect the development of duck babies. The growth of embryos stops if the temperature regime was incorrectly set. The development of duck chicks is often influenced by infections of the bacterial and fungal type, dystrophy of embryos, impaired gas exchange, and genetic diseases.
By carefully observing the formation of embryos, mistakes can be corrected in a timely manner. Biological control is a whole system that includes an assessment of the incubation material, selective opening of eggs with a live embryo, monitoring the brood and its quality, and a full accounting of the results of incubation.
In addition to ovoscopy, weight gain can indicate malformations. When the eggs overheat under the ovoscope, hyperemia, underdevelopment of the skull will be visible, and various deformities will begin to develop. If the eggs do not receive enough heat, then maturation is suspended already at the initial stage of incubation. Such ducklings will be inactive, they will become poorly on their legs, often such young animals suffer from digestive disorders.
At high humidity, eggs practically do not lose weight, and the protein is covered by allantois later. The last ovoscopy most often shows the even parameters of the air cavity, the presence of water in the embryonic membranes. Most of the offspring choke upon hatching with unrealized amniotic fluid. With a lack of moisture, eggs, on the contrary, lose weight very quickly, their shells are brittle. The offspring is hatched earlier, all the offspring are small.
In case of failures of gas exchange processes, incubation in the early period is characterized by the development of a large number of deformities, at later stages the occurrence of various pathologies is noted, in the middle of the cycle, blood is visible in the amyotic fluid, the changes resemble severe overheating.
Final part
Breeding ducks is a rather difficult task, especially today, when most of the purebred birds cannot hatch their offspring on their own. To do this, you need to know how to select the correct duck egg, consider the embryo in it and grow it in an incubator until it hatches. You will need an ovoscope to view duck eggs. Unlike chicken eggs, the process of selecting duck eggs as incubation material is significantly complicated due to the thickness of the shell.
Ovoscope is a device that is designed to determine the quality of the incubation material at the beginning and during the incubation period. The device can be of various shapes and sizes, but most often it is a case with a light bulb and oval holes inside.Ovoscopy by day does not involve a daily check, but only four stages.
Ovoscopy by day helps to identify defects in the formation of the fetus in the early stages, as well as to determine the reasons for the non-standard development of duck chicks. It is necessary to carry out the procedure before laying the eggs in the incubator, then set the desired mode and carry out a second viewing in a week. The third ovoscopy takes place in 5-7 days, and the last one - a couple of days before the duck chicks hatch. Today, if you do not know how to carry out the procedure or where to put the defective eggs, you can use a video on this topic and study everything in detail.