Enough sad posts. Not that I'm not still heartbroken. On the day we lost Pistol, a tiny duckling entered the world. He had "hatched" about a day, day and a half earlier than he entered the world, but he wasn't done cooking yet. Hatched out with a full size, completely unabsorbed, dangerous as all get out(potentially) yolk outside of his body. Also intestines. Luckily all his outside insidey bits were still stuck in the eggshell and we realized what was up immediately and stepped in to help.
Set up a CHICK-U(like NICU, but for preemie baby birds), in the form of a small tray with high walls with wet paper towel in the bottom that we crammed with enough other already warm eggs to really limit duckling's space to move around so he wouldn't accidentally rupture the yolk or pull his guts out accidentally. Then we carefully moved duckling and his attached eggshell and insidey bits to the CHICK-U in the larger incubator, and we carefully squirted some pennicillin around on the paper towel, but not directly on the duckling. Gave it a bit over a day and he was running around like a normal baby duck who just had a large "outie" navel for a little while. Looking at his belly now, you would have no idea of his start. Unabaorbed yolks are relatively common, and even without special care are totally survivable. Pulling out guts accidentally and infection are the two biggest dangers normally, but normally unabsorbed yolks are not as bad as this one was. Very very glad duckling made it. He has been a great comfort the past few days.
He was the only duckling to hatch. After doing some consulting it seems this maybe was from too high of humidity during incubation. Will buy a new incubator before trying to hatch any more ducks, but the guineas did well. All of the fertile guinea eggs hatched with no problems. Have so many of the little things running around now.
All are for sale except for the duck, and our favorite baby chicken, the black one I helped hatch. My aunt is coming for a visit in a few weeks and she has severe allergies, so the guest room must be chicken free and clean by the time she gets here.
Duckling still needs a name. We are close enough to move that we are keeping him. Also the baby chicken. Will do photos once I get on my computer.
From phone