incubated my own eggs for the first time

[Elza]

So after the huge fuss of my quail hen incubating, hatching and then raising her own chick i fell in love so decided to pick up an incubator and incubate a few eggs of my own for a trial. I started with 3 eggs. I am feeling pretty impressed with myself lol. 17 days ago i put 3 24hr/48hr/72hr (1 of each) old quail eggs in the incubator @ 10.30pm and exactly 16 days later nearly to the exact time my first chick hatched. I came home later through the night after being down the road for a workout and as usual, the first thing i do before showering and going to bed is to check and turn my eggs and when i opened the lid there was my first perfect looking baby. I was so proud lol. i also noticed pipping from egg 2 but nothing with egg 3 so far.
Today egg 2 needed help escaping and i noticed that the inside of the egg was leathery and really hard to break through, anyway the chick is out but I have the same issue with this chick as I had with the previous chicks when my hen incubated her own. The feet are curled in what does this mean. why do i have a perfect chick then a not so perfect chick? i did read that there is suppose to be a "lockdown" period which i obviously didnt do as i put more eggs in the incubator 7 days ago which again is probably a beginners huge mistake so i had to keep turning those eggs.. could this really have a major devastation on the chicks? I am so new to this its not funny. I just dont understand how i put the eggs all in at the same time, same heat, same temp and even though i didnt do a lockdown i get a perfect chick but the other isnt. my hen before hand sat on 18 eggs and only 3 hatched, again 1 perfect one but 2 with problems and there were like 10 half incubated chicks and 5 over cooked yolks. only the good chick survived and i assumed she wasnt able to keep all those eggs warm at once and looked as though she was trying to incubate the wrong eggs.. does any know what could be going wrong or could there be in issue with my quails? is it possible i was sold family related quails? I dont know how all this works.

 

[DK newbie]

The lock down doesn't only mean you stop turning, you also increase humidity. This is supposed to prevent the drying out you experienced with egg number 2.
I think the curled toes can either be caused by bad genes or wrong handling/incubation of the eggs. When the hen had 18 eggs, it's no wonder they got far from optimal incubation and got cold and died in turns, except for the 3 lucky ones who at least got sufficiently consistent heat to hatch.
As for getting one perfect chick and one that's not, I think that's kind of random. The strongest chicks have the best chances, but the more optimal the incubation conditions, the more chicks will be perfect..
If I were you, I'd read up on incubation and make sure you have multiple temperature and humidity gauges in the incubator to insure you are spot on all the time. And even then, if the incubator is so small you only put 3 eggs in it at first, I suspect it's a rather cheap one? In which case it might have several issues and pretty much no matter what you do, you will still get less than optimal results. I'm just guessing from what I've read on here, as I don't incubate myself..

 

[ChickenLegs13]

Sounds like when you opened the lid it caused a change in temp & humidity which caused the chick to shrink wrap inside the shell. Remember-no opening the lid while eggs are pipping!
Far as the curled toes, that's typical for my late & problem hatchers. Seems like if it takes them a long time to pip & zip they seem to outgrow the shell and come out all curled up & crippled. Like a plant's roots in too small of a pot.
With chicken chicks I can straighten their toes, put a piece of duct tape on the bottom of their feet to keep them straight and they turn out ok. Quail are way to small for my fat fingers & bad eyes to be able to do that so I cull them on the spot. If they do survive, all they do is crawl around the brooder on their sides & wings for a week and die.

 

[Elza]

If post was read properly you would have noticed I wrote that I put 3 eggs in as a trial. I did this as I wasn't sure of the new incubator I had purchased.. with my hen hatching her own, again I mentioned I just humoured her , even getting one was a surprise especially after the info I have read up about button quails.. I believe it's bcoz I didn't leave them alone the days leading up to hatching.. I have 7 eggs due to hatch in 3 days which I'm worried they didn't have their temp and humidity up enough especially when I was turning them..

 

[ChickenLegs13]

I read the post properly, especially the part where you said "when i opened the lid there was my first perfect looking baby. I was so proud lol. i also noticed pipping from egg 2 but nothing with egg 3 so far.
Today egg 2 needed help escaping and i noticed that the inside of the egg was leathery and really hard to break through,"....That properly caused the shrink wrapping, which caused the curled toes.

Briefly opening the lid to turn the eggs during Day 1-15 doesn't cause enough drop in temp to hurt the eggs. The air temp & humidity level inside the bator drops, true enough, but the temperature inside the eggs is the critical thing and it doesn't change fast enough to matter. As soon as you close the lid the bator temp & humidity gets back to normal in just a few minutes.

 

[Afterfeather]

Hi, I'm in a similar situation at the moment. 6 days ago I hatched out 5 chickens in my Brinsea Mini Advance. One of them has a bent back foot and was walking around on the joint. I didn't open the incubator during lockdown but I believe humidity may have dropped too low while they were hatching.

I've tried using 3mm transpore tape to give it 'duck-feet' as I've seen suggested for chickens with foot problems but it didn't help. Neither did using a pipe cleaner which ended up being too heavy for it to get around. Water is also being suplimented incase riboflavin deficiancy was adding to its problems. Now I'm attempting to splint the leg into the correct position using a bit of metal from a paperclip, carefully covered by tape before applying, and bound using a combo of plasters and more tape.

It's keeping up with it's siblings and as far as I can tell it's not suffering (except that it hates me holding it as I fuss about with its leg every day). So I'll keep trying and hoping.

Best of luck with your little one too.

 

[Everlong]

Can you guys put up a picture of the curled feet and the "FIX"? Fed days ago I put eggs into my incubator. I want to be ready for everything.

 

[Elza]

I'm thinking I was sold quails to close in family. I had 2 more hatch last night/today and again at this point look like their toes arnt going to open up and I think I did everything I was suppose to but earlier on in the incubating process one of my children removed the lid, don't think for long but wondering if this would cos it.. ahhhh this is hard n so touchy..
I have found that chicks with curled legs have lived no longer then 4 days.. all happy and getting about and then turn downhill within minutes and die within the hr.. so sad. So I am no longer going to try incubating my quails eggs and will be outsourcing eggs or finding a female for my lonely male.

 

[Elza]

Heartbreaking to be honest.

 

[DK newbie]

Ow Sorry for your loss.
The problem could just be that the incubator isn't good enough at keeping the right temp and humidity though. As far as I know, you should be able to inbreed for a few generations before it reduces the survival rate significantly (based on coturnix quail, but as they are somewhat closely related, I assume it goes for buttons as well).

I am happy that I was able to get my hands on a pair hatched from foreign eggs though. The rest of my birds come from the same petshop which most likely gets them from the same breeder. Probably a large scale breeder, so they are not necessarily related, but it's nice to know that I have a pair that can produce chicks that are almost certainly not closely related to my other birds.
The hen from that pair is actually broody right now, I'm just worried the roo is bothering her too much. But I don't know how long she's been broody as I came home from a two week vacation just 2 days ago and the one that was taking care of them apparently didn't notice But I can tell from the amount of huge poops that she has been broody for several days. And I think she only has 6 or 7 eggs of which I think some were there already when I left, which would indicate she could have been broody for 10 days or so. Not sure there are enough huge poops for that though.. But I keep my fingers crossed. If you ever come to Denmark, let me know if you want some eggs ^^