Incubator Humidity for French Black Copper Marans Eggs

cheriebellefeathers said:

Hey, thanks! I actually am your neighbor I live in Arkansas, did I out Arizona? my bad haha, but I use a farmer' deluxe 2450 farm innovator incubator, it's nice for what i do. Through the incubation period I kept it at about 35-40% humidity. And the temp at 99.5 as I thought that was about ideal temp. I can see now people are not joking about the difference of hardness of the shell of Marans, and the membranes. I have more eggs I am getting tommorow black copper marans. I am going to try dry incubation, and that is 20% humidity until lockdown and hatching time .. that's the best advice I have seen.

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Hello. I am also in Arkansas currently working on a bcm flock.

Lve my fb/s/blcms. See avatar. I used to breed, hatch, and sell them, but locals prefer 2$ farm store chickens.

Now I let the girls hatch them for me.

Hi, I'd thought I'd ask on this thread as it seems there are a lot of experts on hatching BCM eggs. I recently put 6 BCM eggs in the incubator with 18 others. I just took them out for candling today (day 6), However 3 of the beautiful chocolate eggs have developed small yellow and clear crystal like hard bumps. I'm guessing this is dried fluid leakage. Does this mean that the eggs have gone bad and won't hatch? Do I have a chance of saving them? Is there anything I can do?



Thank you so much, I really appreciate any help!

Fascinating! I have not seen this before. Are these the only eggs in the incubator that are doing this? Is there any odor to these eggs? Are the eggs getting misted by water that is hard? When you candle these eggs, can you see hair line fractures or even tiny holes?

oregonkat said:

Fascinating! I have not seen this before. Are these the only eggs in the incubator that are doing this? Is there any odor to these eggs? Are the eggs getting misted by water that is hard? When you candle these eggs, can you see hair line fractures or even tiny holes?

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Thank you for responding!

Yes these are the only eggs doing this, there are 3 other BCM eggs which aren't doing this (and one of them even had a hairline fracture from the post - which I sealed with wax and it's not doing this). The BCM eggs also arrived with 12 Buff orpington eggs, all which are incubating and developing perfectly.
I cracked one of the problem BCM eggs to see what was going on, and so see if I could potentially rescue the other two. This is what I saw:



I was very careful not to disturb the insides when transferring into the bowl. The yolk was already broken and as you can see little speckles of the yolk in the white. I think the eggs might have been scrambled too much in the post when being delivered to me. But then why are the BO eggs okay?

There was no smell at all. And I think that small blood clot looking thing, is the start of an embryo?

What do you think?

Should I take out the other two from the incubator? I don't think they're infected yet, but I also think they might not hatch if the yolk is scrambled?

When candling, because of the dark shell color, I really couldn't see much. But not veins visible as yet.

As there are no visible veins developing in that egg, I would say scrambled, sadly. I dont think I would take a chance with any of the leaking eggs. It's not worth risking your whole hatch especially if the Buff's are progressing nicely. Good luck with them.

oregonkat said:

As there are no visible veins developing in that egg, I would say scrambled, sadly. I dont think I would take a chance with any of the leaking eggs. It's not worth risking your whole hatch especially if the Buff's are progressing nicely. Good luck with them.

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Thank you so much for the help! I will do that now. So sad, as I was so excited about the BCMs. Hopefully the other 3 will hatch!