Intervention: Helping Your Chicks Hatch

[walkswithdog]

Quote:
Mother nature has these problems all the time. I rear chicks under broodies - all kinds of things do go wrong. I've assisted any number of brooded chicks, many die before I discover the problem, many I assist out.

Mother nature is cruel, uncaring and uncomplicated. They die as often, under a broody as in an incubator. I get 100% hatches in my bator, I get them under broodies, sometimes my hatch rate is zero, sometimes so is the broody's.

I have a hen who just hatched three eggs, well she tried. Two hatched normally, I had to help the third out, he was stuck.

In nature they die too. If I'd left the last one alone, it would have died. Under a hen. That happens OFTEN. Hens also stomp, abandon and eat chicks. Mother nature is not perfect, just better than even odds. A hen has a brain the size of a pea and instincts - neither of those things produce intelligent perfection.

I have incubators BECAUSE broodies mess it up often enough that I need incubators for the damaged, abandoned and stuck, or poorly incubated.

What works for any individual person incubating eggs varies both by microclimate -their house AC, city and state, their equipment - size, ventilation, fan, quality of thermometer hygrometer or calibration of them, or not and whether the eggs were stored long or short, shipped or not - whether that went well or poorly.

Given that number of variables - it's not surprising that it takes awhile to figure out what works for anyone person, or incubator. Fortunately we have brains larger than peas.

 

[NateinFL]

This post is a life-saver for my chicks. I had 3 that were stuck inside their shell, all pipped, and knew something bad was happening, when I came home from work and they made no progress on the hatching so I followed the directions to the tee and all 3 that were stuck are doing just fine, along with the other 3. I have a slide projector that puts out LOTS of heat so I locked myself in a very HOT closet and performed the operation. They came out kickin and no blood either so they were definitely wantin out of the eggs bad. The inner membrane was tough like leather and they would have died in the egg without my help, thanks for this wonderful post

And I agree that intervention should ONLY be used as a last resort....I hate messing with nature but I couldnt stand to watch them die in the shell.

-Nathan

 

[BJ_BOBBI_JO]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_diCCXUQB6I

The above is a 2 minute long video of our chick hatching yday (12-06-09). We had to help it get to the point of hatching and it is now doing fine. It's healthy and walking about peeping all the time. We found the hen outside who had been missing for 3 weeks last Friday, she was alive and well and sitting on 16 eggs keeping them warm. My husband didnt know not to mess with her and he put her and the eggs in the coop thinking they would stay warmer since the temp was 18 degrees outside and getting ready to snow. She freaked out and wouldnt sit on the eggs.

So we brought the eggs inside and made a homemade incubator with a regular lamp, tenfoil and duct tape. Several hours later the 1st egg began peeping and made a crack in the egg. 12 hours later it had only made a little hole. After 38 hours it still hadnt made it very far and seemed to be peeping less so we was afraid it was weakening and dying. The membrane around the hole was drying out and brown.

We had done some research and talked to ppl who are experienced with this and they all said the humidity is very important and if its not high enough the chick cant properly hatch out. Our house is dry because we use a wood burning stove to heat it so it wouldnt have done any good to put a pan on water on the stove because the incubator is in a different room with an electric heater so the dogs cant get to it. So after doing research we used tweezers to gently pull tiny peices of shell off the browned membrane which lead to pulling it off the off whitish/yellowing membrane too. We did this on the top where the air sac is. We ended up doing this to the top half of the egg or less and it hatched itself out the rest of the way.

OK now for the questions below:
OK since we did all that just fine we helped #2 out as well. It had been peeping loudly and trying to hatch for about 24 hours and only had a crack and micro tiny hole in the shell. The membrane around the hole was turning brown like the others chicks did. We did the same thing as above and pulled the shell off the browning dried looking membrane and made a hole big enough that its beak and toe was sticking out. Then we let it rest. It seemed so weak and was no longer peeping a lot like it had been so we helped it out more. It pushed itself out and is now peeping a lot.

BUT it's still connected to that umbilical cord thing that connects to the egg. The other chick broke off from it real fast but this one dont.

Why is that?

About how long will is stay connected to the cord?

About how long does it take them to get up and try walking around? The other chick was doing that right away.

The other chick started standing almost right away and this one is still laying down conected to the cord but peeping around a lot.

 

[NateinFL]

Oh yeah I had that happen where his umbilical cord was still attached, it means its too early to hatch, I ended up cutting it with scissors as it was very, very thin with no blood. He was a whiner and smaller than the rest, I gave him away. Wishing you good luck.

 

[BJ_BOBBI_JO]

My troubled chick who didnt want to hatch and had the umbilical cord that hung on is doing well. It took the chick about 45 minutes to break off from the cord. It was alert and holding its head up to look around a lot but its legs didnt seem to want to work right. But after about 24 hours and a nights worth of rest it is now walking and acting like a normal chick.

I was scared since we had to start from a small hole the chick had pecked 24 hours before we started working on it.

 

[clawrence628]

thank you so much! now one of our chicks won't die in its shell. now we have 4 chicks! this rulez! you rule!

 

[lboehmer2]

Please help.. I read your post but unfortunately yesterday I probably screwed everything up.... The eggs were abandoned 4 days after the others hatched. Today's day 5. They could possibly be the other hen's eggs but there are chicks in them. They are in my house under a heat lamp now... I helped by making a tiny hole, one's 1/2 way out and peeping and I've let him be. The other 4 have movement but when I tried to make a tiny hole, I saw a little blood and knew I tore the membrane. I don't know how old these 4 are...... Now what? I'm worried sick and guilt ridden for possibly killing them. By the way, none of them had made any attempt at coming out before I started messing with them as I assumed they were all long gone since they were left in the cold for 2 days. The momma deliberately moved the 4 hatched chicks out of the nest box and left these.... They are Old english chicks.
To top it off I can't get the hang of navigating around this website to see if anyone posted any replies to my plea for help. Maybe you can e-mail me???
Thanks,
Please help.
Lisa
[email protected]

 

[GotChicken?]

I just ended a hatch where I only got 2 chicks out of 16 eggs. Three instances of sudden temp drops (2 caused by humidity, 1 by the fan going out in my homemade hatcher) killed off the majority of the developing chicks. And the only reason I have one of those chicks is because of my intervention, because it had pipped when the fan went out. I woke up to this travesty thinking the chick was dead, but saw the beak weakly move, and moved in to remove it from the egg. All I left was the part of the shell the umbilical was still attached to; no blood resulted from removing the shell and membrane. The chick was very weak the first day, but that's understandable considering that being shrink-wrapped in the membrane would be the equivalent of getting squeezed to death by a boa constrictor. That evening it was moved to the brooder with my 2-week old Silkie chicks, and having their company did the chick a world of good (along with a 20 hour nap). It now zips around the feeder like it's jacked up on speed.

As far as I'm concerned, if you help a chick out because of an emergency - in my case mechanical failure of my hatcher - then intervention is not the cardinal sin people tend to make it out to be. After all, incubating eggs in a styrofoam/plastic box isn't exactly natural; we interfered from the start.

 

[Shared Acres]

Great post, to many people say not to, but I agree, I have seen eggs under hens where the chick has died, obviously because of humidity issues and the membrane becoming like leather!

 

[EweSheep]

I've done this many times in the 10 years I've had chickens and I would win most but lost a few. Sometimes you just do the best you can do is the BEST way. It does not hurt to intervene if you really need to.