Did your power go out? Don't chuck those eggs yet!

I set eggs back on the 20th and our power went out during the series of tornadoes over the weekend. The electricity went out around 8 PM on Saturday. It still had not been restored by 1 PM Sunday, so we packed up and went to a relative's home to escape the 102 degree heat. Sometime that afternoon our power came back on. The incubator had been completely non-functional for at least 17 hours (8 PM - 1 PM), but was likely out for closer to 20 hours because my neighbor texted my husband around 4 in the afternoon saying the power was back. Well, I was prepared to toss the whole lot when I decided to check one that I knew the be developing on schedule before throwing them all out. I cracked the shell and out come a live (not for long) 10-11 day old embryo! It wriggled around and blinked its eyes, so it was definitely alive despite the outage.

The moral of the story is: those embryos are a lot tougher than you'd think. If you don't open the incubator, keep it in a draft-free place, and the temperature in your house stays relatively constant, there's a chance you'll still have success even in the face of a power failure. We completely opened up the house overnight Saturday because it was so hot, and our house got down into the 70s. My incubator is a Brinsea Octagon Eco (the 20 series) and is kept in my closet on the floor. The hatch is due next Wednesday, but might be off a bit due to the cooling. I'll re-post with results.

What a bummer. That is one of the downsides of artificial incubation- you're at the mercy of electricity. I'm trying to raise a good "crop" of replacement layers to start early next year as a good portion of my flock is now 3 years old. I wonder if there's a window in which a decreased temperature is tolerated. Perhaps those closer to term and very early in incubation are more susceptible to environmental fluctuations. I won't know for sure how things pan out until next week. I'll be candling this weekend prior to moving eggs to the hatcher and I may find then that I've got a whole batch of duds. I hope that's not the case, but I'll soon know!
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by OldChurchEggery1 

I won't know for sure how things pan out until next week.
 

Today's the day- due to the power outage I didn't figure on any chicks hatching exactly on time, but I was wrong. I heard peeping in the incubator before bed last night and woke up to one chick and a good number of pips. A total of twelve eggs made it to the hatcher. At the time the power went out, I had 14 eggs that had developed to a degree. I'll have final results by tomorrow morning when all hatching should be finished.

Here's a picture of the final results. 10 of the 12 pipped and hatched successfully. Hooray! The two remaining eggs had no pips as of this morning and I believe that they chicks inside did not make it. All of the chicks here are EEs.