Sad, sad day...

Of the 30 duck eggs we acquired, one was cracked to begin with. So we were down to 29 from the get go.

Of those, only 3 made it to a point with a moving, living embryo.

Of those 3, only 2 started pipping (peeping and tapping at the shells) on Monday. They were still tapping yesterday.

Apparently they took too long to hatch and died, as we have two fully formed otherwise healthy ducklings who are dead in their shells. The saddest part of this is that tomorrow is my son's fifth birthday. We've been hoping to have ducklings in time for his birthday, but now it seems he'll be helping me bury them tomorrow.

I still have a faint glimmer of hope for the third egg (a Cayuga duck egg), but not much. I'm done with ducks. We gave away our pair that weren't laying because there wasn't any point in keeping them. I really wasn't terribly keen on having ducks anyways, but I'm so sad that our poor little peeping ducklings have died. I wish I had known that I could crack their shells for them or I would have done it yesterday to help them along. Sadly, I had no idea how to hatch a duck and now they've died. I'll move on I'm sure, I have chicks to take care of and animals to feed and life to do. But I'm a sucker for baby animals, I tell you what. I cried like a baby when I cracked their shells and saw two perfect little ducklings that weren't moving an inch.

I've determined now to never, ever, EVER do this again. I am not putting myself (or my kids) through this. I just hate incubating eggs myself. So we got four Brahma pullets in the hopes that at least one will go broody (and the rest can lay eggs and produce fertile eggs that don't come from inbred siblings). Then I can let Mama Hen do her thing and stay the heck out of trying to hatch another animal's baby. Ain't gonna happen!