Muscovy ducks, or indouki, are becoming more common type of poultry due to simple care and unpretentiousness to the conditions. If your experience of keeping these birds is small, and you would like to get offspring from them, several questions can naturally arise about what chickens are female juveniles, how many hatching offspring, and how to solve possible problems with hatching.
Hatching features
Immediately make a reservation that musk ducks have an excellent instinct of brooding, which is not the case with their maternal talents. Therefore, to get offspring from them is a very real task. 
It also makes sense to contain birds for receiving egg products for food, because even being a meat breed, Indoout shows good productivity indicators (80-120 pieces / year), and their eggs are much more nutritious than chicken eggs.
Find out which breeds are suitable for home breeding.
How many kids are sitting on the eggs, and when they sit on them
Sexual maturity in female musk ducks occurs at the age of 6-7 months, with good conditions of detention (the main factor is the optimum temperature) may occur earlier, under adverse conditions it is delayed for several months.
At the same age, females start laying eggs. However, their egg-laying occurs only in spring and autumn and lasts about two months each season. It should be understood that the frequency of egg collection will depend on the instinct of hatching.
Under natural conditions, when about 15 pieces accumulate in the nest, the feathery is ready for the process. On average, the development of ducklings takes from 29 to 35 days. 
How many eggs to put under the duck
It is possible to determine that the female prepares to hatch eggs by her behavior - the bird is laughing, hostile to its congeners, hisses are driving others away, and the nest begins to settle down with fluff.
On average, the female puts and incubates about 20 eggs, but it should be borne in mind that among them may be old and unsuitable for breeding offspring. Therefore, the nest should be regularly checked, in time to remove unsuitable specimens and enclose fresh for incubation.
It will also be useful for you to find out when the indouin begins to carry eggs, why they don’t carry eggs, what egg production of indoutok is at home, how useful it is and how you can cook indoout eggs.
It also sometimes happens that not all eggs are placed under the hen, and this threatens to kill offspring.
It is possible to determine the number of eggs for incubation on the basis of the size of the female: young medium-sized individuals are able to incubate 8–12 pieces, large-sized ducks can warm up to 15 pieces. 
Optimal conditions for incubation:
- You need to prepare the nest (fill it with fresh litter).
- Place the nest is recommended in a warm, quiet, secluded place without drafts.
- Other birds (ducks, chickens and other species) should not have access to the hen, otherwise it can often get up from the nest.
Important! Experienced poultry farmers do not recommend laying more than 15 eggs for incubation. They should only be slightly visible from under the duck's feathering in a sitting position.
How to plant an egg on eggs
As soon as the duck began to nest, you need to immediately create all the conditions for her to incubate the offspring. As we indicated earlier, the incubation instinct depends on how often and in what quantity you take the eggs.
And here there is a snag: if you do not collect at all, then before a set of sufficient quantities, most of the eggs can become unusable. And if they ate to take everything away for storage, the female can refuse to sit out at all this season or find a more secluded place for herself.
For the proper maintenance of musk ducks, it will be useful for you to learn how to contain an indouka in winter, how to distinguish a male from an independent female, what are indootok diseases and how to treat them.
In this situation, you need to resort to tricks - a false egg, thanks to which the female will regularly rush and will not change place. 
The process of planting an indutice on a nest can be described something like this:
- In the prepared nest, put a false egg (it should be marked).
- Every 1-2 days you need to collect the eggs laid by the female, then to lay them. You need to pick up not everything, but leave a few pieces in the nest. They need to be stored no more than 10 days at a temperature of 10 ° C. After this period, the use of products for offspring is impossible.
- After 10-15 days, the duck will begin to build a nest, but it is impossible to immediately lay eggs, you need to give the female several days to adapt.
- When the duck leaves the nest for walking and feeding, you need to lay the saved eggs and extract the false. The female should not see anything.
- Laid eggs should be placed in the tail section.
- Every day, when the female leaves the nest, the future offspring should be carefully checked.
- Starting from 25 days from the time of incubation, it is necessary to check several times a day, because some chicks can hatch before the others.
Important! Hatching babies must be taken from the female until all the rest of the offspring appear. After all, the duck, seeing the first chicks, can stop incubation.
Why do not Indoout Eggs
Although musk ducks have proven to be excellent chicks, in some cases they may not begin the process of incubation. Why this happens and what to do - consider next. 
The reasons
The main factors due to which the duck does not start incubation:
- You take all the eggs from the nest.
- Too young or old female.
- High noise, bright lighting in the house.
- The presence of parasites in the nest. You can see that the female is not sitting, but is standing in it.
- The attack of rats. Rodents can steal the contents of the nest and scare away the feathery.
What to do
If the problem is in the age of the bird, it is unlikely to be able to do anything. If the bird is too young, you need to provide it with all the conditions and wait until it matures for posterity. If the feathery is too old, most often it is rejected. Analyze, not too often you remove the eggs.
Did you know? According to one of the versions, the musk duck got its name due to the fact that the old individuals were attributed with the ability to secrete fat from the growths on their heads, which has the smell of musk.
Keep a few marked eggs in the nest. If parasites are present, the house should be treated and bedding should be replaced. Also review the conditions in the house and the diet of birds. 
Can chicken eggs sit
In practice, some breeders are aware of cases when chicken offspring was laid down on the hedgehog and they successfully hatched him before hatching. Whether a duck will sit on someone else's eggs depends largely on the nature of the feathered one.
Muscovy ducks are considered to be quite clever, because they can recognize poor quality (that is, unfertilized or spoiled) eggs and throw them out of the nest. Since chicken products are smaller and may have a different color, the duck may well get rid of it.
Familiarize yourself with the peculiarities of growing Indouti at home.
It is also worth considering some physiological features - body temperature in ducks is higher than in chickens, which can cause the death of chick embryos. Also, if you decide on such a trick, keep in mind that a duck on average weighs more chicken and can easily crush its egg, which also has a thinner shell.
If the process of incubation of chicken offspring is proceeding normally, it is necessary to follow the process of hatching (19-22 days) and immediately remove the chicks. 
Tips
Despite the fact that musk ducks can incubate under different conditions, it is advisable to follow these guidelines:
- The diet during the incubation period should be based on dry grain, feeding with wet mixtures should be minimized or stopped altogether. You should also ensure the hen fresh juicy greens.
- In the second half of the incubation period, try to provide silence for the feathered. It is not recommended to carry out construction work near the house.
- Remember that in the fall the number of fertilized eggs decreases, which is the physiological norm.
- Water tanks should be placed near the nests to ensure optimum humidity. In them, the duck should be able to plunge. Bathing females is very useful, because the moisture from her feathers has a positive effect on the gas exchange of the offspring through the shell.
- Feeders should also be located near the nest so that the hen as little as possible and less often leaves it.
- Feeding birds need to perform on a clear schedule.
- On the day of a bird can walk up to 1-1,5 hours once. If she incubates chicks during the cold season, fresh air should enter the room when the window is open.
To get offspring from musk duck is a feasible task even for a novice poultry breeder.Did you know? The bird was domesticated by the ancient Aztecs.
Females of this species have a good incubation instinct. The main thing is to provide them with simple minimum conditions for keeping and feeding, and the appearance of offspring will not take long.
