What Went Wrong? *Eggtopsy* *Graphic*

Ok, I ordered hatching eggs and ended up with a 5/22 hatch.
Two of the chicks that hatched have partially absorbed yoke sacs. One is fiesty and recovering the other is very droopy and I am trying to work with it.

I followed hatching advise for at altitude hatching of shipped eggs (thats where I got my goals for humidity and keeping both vent plugs open)

Eggs arrived and rested 18 hours
Into the incubator with the turner off for 7 or 8 days, then turned on the turner
Temp was at 99.5 +/- 0.2 and stayed steady.
Targeted 55% humidity and was able to keep it between 50-55% for the first 18 days. Had a drop on day 12, down to 32% overnight
Increased humidity to target 65% for lockdown. Spiked to 75% on the evening of the 21st. I had aid a chick in trouble so I refilled the wells while I was at it and some spilled causing the spike.
*Humidity targets were taken from some high altitude hatching advise pages including one by a local breeder I know

I candled on days
5 (verify air cell stability before turning on the turner)
7(air cell stability again)
10 (looking for development, tossing bloodrings)
14 (final toss of any obviously bad eggs)
16 (outlining air cells to determine who would go into a carton. There were enough funky ones that I just put everyone into cartons)

Stopped turning the evening of day 17, again to help the aircells and chick alignment given advise from shipped egg experts.

I am by no means an expert at candling and chose to error on the side of caution and include possibly bad eggs rather than risk tossing good eggs that just looked off. 19 eggs went into lockdown, 5 eggs that went into lockdown were questionable, 5 hatched, the rest I tested this afternoon and found were dead. 2 of the 5 that hatched had protruding yoke sacs, one not so badly but it was the last to hatch and is sluggish. The other had a worse sac but has been very lively.

I will post pics in the next post; for some reason my internet freezes when loading pics to BYC sometimes and I don't want to loose the details again.

I need to know if there is anything anyone can pick out as the likely cause of demise so I can fix it for the next batch. I really don't want to have this happen again...

Again, Warning, EGGTOPSY PICS follow...

The head is on the left, beak pointing down. Kinda hard to make out.

I wish I could give you some wisdom, shipped eggs can give variable results, everything you read says in could be the temperature is off, humidity too variable etc , bottom line is that even when you do everything right, sometimes you still get a bad hatch. I am so sorry! Don't give up! Reevaluate your thermometer and humidity testing tools, read advise from everyone and if possible, try come local hatching eggs that haven't been shipped. Then jump in with both feet and try again!

Humidity sounds high for chickens...I'm trying dry incubation this time around...last time had a lot of full growth but no pips and pips that needed help.

superjjf said:

Humidity sounds high for chickens...I'm trying dry incubation this time around...last time had a lot of full growth but no pips and pips that needed help.

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I will definantly lower the humidity in the future but the high altitude advise for shipped eggs was exactly what I did. I think I will try dry incubation on some local eggs with the next batch. Hopefully that will have better results.

Joyous- Thanks. I tried to check all the blocks on this and it's just sooo frustrating. If they had all died early it wouldn't have been nearly so bad I think. Then I could easily have blamed shipping conditions and left it at that. I will be trying again this week. I had already talked to a lady I found of CL listing some RIR and Buff Brahma eggs. I hope local makes a big difference.

I would keep the humidity at 52% relative the whole time. I also would turn the auto turner on at day 2, 8 days for chickens is 1/3 of the development process. What kind of incubator are you running?

In the pics it also looks like the chicks are upside down, are the eggs set point down? Also what do you mean go into the carton?

SDHeritage said:

In the pics it also looks like the chicks are upside down, are the eggs set point down? Also what do you mean go into the carton?

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Yes, the chicks head was at the small end and for lockdown I took egg cartons and cut them down to keep the fat end up. This is suppost to help chicks survive hatching with damaged air cells

SDHeritage said:

I would keep the humidity at 52% relative the whole time. I also would turn the auto turner on at day 2, 8 days for chickens is 1/3 of the development process. What kind of incubator are you running?  

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Farm Innovators Pro. It's very similar to a hovabator.

For those who said high humidity... do you mean at the end or during the whole time? I thought I'd want to aim for 55% until lockdown (I'm not high altitude).

Joyce Brandon
http://brownfoxfarm.weebly.com