Can anyone tell by looking at my dead chick in it's shell why it may have died at the last minute?

Here is a pic of the dead, fully developed emu in his shell with it broken half open. All I can see that is possibly weird is the big egg sack. I also wrote on the image which end is the small end. Was he possibly not positioned correctly? I am pretty upset

In 2012, Holliewould, I busted open an egg abandoned in the nest -- 'infertile' I thought of it as. It contained a fully-grown dead chick. Completely formed.

In 2013, Hollie, I did likewise with an egg left by Noddie Big Ears Emu -- same: fully-formed dead chick.

I have no idea . . .

se

my best guess is # 1 it was malpositioned in addition to # 2 too high humidity during incubation.
It's a sad find and am so sorry for your loss
but better monitoring of the weight loss/ etc. on your part would possibly help in the future, if you want to try again.
This goes for ALL eggs, please know the proper humidity & temp.'s needed and watch carefully for a successful hatch.

birdeo said:

It's a sad find and am so sorry for your loss
but better monitoring of the weight loss/ etc. on your part would possibly help in the future, if you want to try again.
This goes for ALL eggs, please know the proper humidity & temp.'s needed and watch carefully for a successful hatch.

Click to expand...

I monitored that egg from day one with the weight loss. The very first day at 30% humidity it lost 4 grams, when it should have lost only 1.9 grams. From everything I read, when it loses too much weight, you increase the humidity. At any given time, at most I only had the humidity at 40%. I was constantly increasing up to maximum 40% humidity because of the extreme weight loss.

Can you PLEASE confirm that when an emu egg loses too much weight that it needs the humidity increased? Should I have increased it to 50% to stop the weight loss?

What do you think about the egg sack? Is that egg sack really big for an emu chick that was chirping for two days? What does that egg sack indicate?

From this pic, do you think the chick was not positioned correctly in his shell? If so, what makes you think that? The head was under the egg sack. Should the head have been placed against the small end? Or towards the big end?

Sorry for all of the questions, but I want to try again without these results

If it helps with evaluating this situation, I have the records, along with videos of wiggles, of weight loss, and chirps. I want to do it right. I don't EVER want to open up an egg with a one pound fully developed emu baby in it again. Thank you for any input.

briefvisit said:

In 2012, Holliewould, I busted open an egg abandoned in the nest -- 'infertile' I thought of it as. It contained a fully-grown dead chick. Completely formed.

In 2013, Hollie, I did likewise with an egg left by Noddie Big Ears Emu -- same: fully-formed dead chick.

I have no idea . . .

se

Click to expand...

We will get to the bottom of this! Why this happens should not be a mystery. I will do everything I can to not ever let something like this happen again. There should be some signs when an emu chick is in distress in that shell! Let's figure it out! I have been looking for more active forums on this. Unfortunately there is not a lot to go around.

So sorry you lost your chick, I know you were looking forward to it. I don't know anything about hatching, I got my boy at 2 days old, he's now 2 years old and so bonded to me, maybe thats a better way to go less nerve racking.

Yes, I didn't say I was sorry.

And there is -- I have hunted exhaustively -- simply no other group of emu lover's to be found on the Net. The help available here is absolutely the best there is.

se

I'm sorry for your loss.

What humidity should you incubate Emu eggs at? I'm dealing with Ostrich Egg incubation right now and I've had to go to the extreme of keeping the incubator in a spare room, with the air conditioning going WITH a dehumidifier running 24/7 just to keep Humidity in the mid 20's (and that's probably still too high, but I don't know what else to do).

yolk sac I'm sure is more water then any other component (obviously). Yolk sac that big still = the humidity was way too high? Just a guess here, Emu is a dry desert bird after all.

Nicophorus said:

What humidity should you incubate Emu eggs at? I'm dealing with Ostrich Egg incubation right now and I've had to go to the extreme of keeping the incubator in a spare room, with the air conditioning going WITH a dehumidifier running 24/7 just to keep Humidity in the mid 20's (and that's probably still too high, but I don't know what else to do).

yolk sac I'm sure is more water then any other component (obviously). Yolk sac that big still = the humidity was way too high? Just a guess here, Emu is a dry desert bird after all.

Click to expand...

Yea I was thinking the humidity was too high too! However, I never let it go above 40%. From this forum, I was told that if my egg was losing too much weight, that I needed to raise the humidity. When it comes to ratites, unfortunately this forum is slow to respond. I know of no other forum to get help with when it comes to these types of birds. I am going to look for some active facebook pages for you Nicophorus!