chookcomplex
Chirping
- Oct 1, 2022
- 43
- 46
- 61
A follow up to this post https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/eggs-not-hatching-day-21-5.1561145/#post-26490825
13 out of 14 eggs hatched which is quite catastrophic but I'm going to try and do it better this time.
Here are some conditions of the hatch:
- Incubator used
- Temperatures throughout the hatch kept stable at 37.6 degrees Celcius according to the incubator thermometer which I calibrated with another thermometer. Humidity is measured by the incubator's in built meter but I have no other humidity calibrating tool.
- Humidity was kept at 45%-55% pre-lock down although occassionally it would go up to 60-70 on four ocassions when adding water was overdone.
Is that high humidity dangerous for the hatch?
- At days 5, 10 and 18 i candled by hurriedly picked up the eggs one by one out of the incubator. I have no idea if I was too roughly handling them but I feared the temperature drop taking the lid off: I'm not sure when this temperature drops become dangerous.
- At lockdown day at day 18, I removed the automatic turners and let the eggs sit at 37.6 degrees Celcius and kept humidity at 65% - 80%. On one ocassion overnight, the humidity dropped to 45% and another morning it was at 60% but as soon as I noticed, I added warm water.
- Despite my monitoring of the humidity, weight loss % of the eggs at lockdown proceeded much quicker than I expected. 70% of my eggs had hit 11-13% weight loss by day 15 so I compensated by keeping humidity at 55%
- Egg average weight at beginning about 43g
- Oldest eggs 7 days old
- The eggs used were the first eggs laid by my hens
Upon cracking open 5 eggs to inspect the casualties, I found:
2 which were just yolks,
2 had embryos the size of a thumbnail floating around
1 was highly developed, like an 18 day old one but had quite a bit of yolk left over the absorb. The membrane which I've never inspected before was quite leathery but I guess it's moot since it never internally pipped.
Any insight would be appreciated. I probably did something wrong, I read that on normal hatches 75% success is good but I didn't quite expect 90% to fail this time.
13 out of 14 eggs hatched which is quite catastrophic but I'm going to try and do it better this time.
Here are some conditions of the hatch:
- Incubator used
- Temperatures throughout the hatch kept stable at 37.6 degrees Celcius according to the incubator thermometer which I calibrated with another thermometer. Humidity is measured by the incubator's in built meter but I have no other humidity calibrating tool.
- Humidity was kept at 45%-55% pre-lock down although occassionally it would go up to 60-70 on four ocassions when adding water was overdone.
Is that high humidity dangerous for the hatch?
- At days 5, 10 and 18 i candled by hurriedly picked up the eggs one by one out of the incubator. I have no idea if I was too roughly handling them but I feared the temperature drop taking the lid off: I'm not sure when this temperature drops become dangerous.
- At lockdown day at day 18, I removed the automatic turners and let the eggs sit at 37.6 degrees Celcius and kept humidity at 65% - 80%. On one ocassion overnight, the humidity dropped to 45% and another morning it was at 60% but as soon as I noticed, I added warm water.
- Despite my monitoring of the humidity, weight loss % of the eggs at lockdown proceeded much quicker than I expected. 70% of my eggs had hit 11-13% weight loss by day 15 so I compensated by keeping humidity at 55%
- Egg average weight at beginning about 43g
- Oldest eggs 7 days old
- The eggs used were the first eggs laid by my hens
Upon cracking open 5 eggs to inspect the casualties, I found:
2 which were just yolks,
2 had embryos the size of a thumbnail floating around
1 was highly developed, like an 18 day old one but had quite a bit of yolk left over the absorb. The membrane which I've never inspected before was quite leathery but I guess it's moot since it never internally pipped.
Any insight would be appreciated. I probably did something wrong, I read that on normal hatches 75% success is good but I didn't quite expect 90% to fail this time.
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