High chick mortality during hatch.

Rough Draft

Hatching
Apr 26, 2017
9
0
4
First time hatching we've had 19/42 eggs hatch so far in about 38 hours into lockdown. 1 couldn't seem to get his balance walking around falling and this morning he died. 2 chick's started to "unzip" there eggs and then died and 1 chick has been piped for like 30 hours and hasn't started unzip yet which has me concerned.

Why do my chick's unzip partially and then die? Is this level of mortality normal?
 
First time hatching we've had 19/42 eggs hatch so far in about 38 hours into lockdown. 1 couldn't seem to get his balance walking around falling and this morning he died. 2 chick's started to "unzip" there eggs and then died and 1 chick has been piped for like 30 hours and hasn't started unzip yet which has me concerned.

Why do my chick's unzip partially and then die? Is this level of mortality normal?


:welcome

No, it is not normal.
What are your temps and humidity? Do you have vents open for them? Are all the unhatched chicks in the incubator? What was humidity during the first 17 days of incubation. What kind of incubator are you using?
 
welcome-byc.gif


No, it is not normal.
What are your temps and humidity? Do you have vents open for them? Are all the unhatched chicks in the incubator? What was humidity during the first 17 days of incubation. What kind of incubator are you using?
Temp was 37.5 C we started off lockdown at around 78% humidity but after chicks started to hatch it climbed up to as high as 88%. We left the hatched chicks in the incubator until day 2 when we noticed the first dead chick, at this time we removed all the dry chicks quickly and removed the egg to verify that the chick had died. The humidity during the first 17 days was a bit of a mix mostly around 60% or so but we had some ups and downs, definitely sometime we will be better at for the next time. We are using one of those styrofoam incubators it has a fan and both plugs we left open during the entire incubation.
 
Temp was 37.5 C we started off lockdown at around 78% humidity but after chicks started to hatch it climbed up to as high as 88%. We left the hatched chicks in the incubator until day 2 when we noticed the first dead chick, at this time we removed all the dry chicks quickly and removed the egg to verify that the chick had died. The humidity during the first 17 days was a bit of a mix mostly around 60% or so but we had some ups and downs, definitely sometime we will be better at for the next time. We are using one of those styrofoam incubators it has a fan and both plugs we left open during the entire incubation.

Temps sound good, you have vents open, that's great. The only issue I see in those numbers is the incubation humidity. Unless you are in high elevations. 60% is extremely high for the first 17 days for the majority of people using table top incubators, especially styro. I'm surprised you've had that many hatchers. You could have chicks aspirating on excess fluid and that could be why they aren't making it. There's definitely other things that could be going on such as breeder nutrition and such, but I would start with lowering the humidity over the incubation period for following hatches, again, if you aren't high elevation. I'll give you a link for humidity.
http://letsraisechickens.weebly.com...anuals-understanding-and-controlling-humidity
 
Thanks we will be starting a new incubation next week. We will monitor humidity better and stay on top of things better this time.
 

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