I'm stumped--death by breed

WalkingOnSunshine said:

I'll add something to keep the eggs up off the floor during lockdown. This won't, however, do anything about the problem of the blue eggs all dying very early while the brown eggs had a good hatch rate.

I have another batch of eggs ready to go. I separated the birds into breed-specific breeding pens when this batch went into the bator and started gathering them during lockdown, so they are nice and fresh. Some will be black copper Marans, so same hens but different rooster this time on the brown eggs. I'm going to also set some more Ameraucana eggs from the same rooster/hens combo even though I don't need any more Ameraucana this year just to see if the weird 0% hatch rate happens again or it was a fluke.

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PD-Riverman said:

You do realize that it can take weeks for a hen to completely clear from a rooster after being removed from him? So if these eggs are not around 3 weeks +/- after taking her from a certain rooster they could still be some of his.
Of course. As I said above, "I separated the birds into breeding pens when these eggs went into the bator and started gathering them during lockdown." That means that they were in separate breeding pens for three weeks. Actually, it was a bit more than that because I separated them a few days before I set eggs in the incubator.


As far as the blue eggs dying because of the incubator----I do not see it-----you said the blue eggs were in different locations through out the turner-----if they all were in the same spot in the turner then might need to try to figure out a problem. I have hatched MANY blue and other colored eggs and never had a problem with them.
No, I don't see it either. That's why I'm looking for help, since the Ameraucana and Marans hens were the same age almost to the day, lived together, ate the same food, used the same nest boxes, and covered by the same rooster. All eggs were gathered together and set randomly in the carton while I was gathering eggs and in the incubator. It doesn't make sense to me that there is some form of illness that would hit the Ameraucanas but not the Marans in that environment, and I've even hatched eggs from those specific Ameraucana hens and rooster before. I've hatched many, many eggs and never had something so weird happen.

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