Late stage - Dead in shell

[Cheri14]

I have a LG still air incubator with an egg turner. I bought 15 shipped eggs. I could see from candling that three of the embryos had died by roughly day 8. The 5 embryos i am asking about were all late stage death in the shell. One of them was upside down in the egg so i know what happened to that one. I've attached pics of the dead chicks to help determine the cause of death. Throughout the process my temp and humidity were correct. I ended up with 6 live chicks.

 

[Cheri14]

This is the 3rd pic.

 

[Henny]

I have experienced exactly what you have with the early and late mortalities. With shipped eggs there are extra factors I guess that contribute to this. Here are 2 websites that might help you try to figure out what might have happened. I found them to be helpful and hope you will too. This one is MSUcares.com on troubleshooting failures with egg incubation http://msucares.com/poultry/reproductions/trouble.html
The next one is from Aviagen website on breaking out and analyzing hatch debris http://www.aviagen.com/assets/Tech_...os/05HowTo5-BreakOutandAnalyseHatchDebris.pdf

 

[WalnutHill]

First one upside down. Second one looks like the air cell was large enough, but the membrane looks dry at the air cell (low humidity). Third one looks like the air cell was too small/chick too large.

 

[Cheri14]

Does the yolk being outside of the abdomen indicate the age of death? I read two schools of thought, one being that the yolk goes into the abdomen on day 19 and the other being the yolk doesn't go into the abdomen until just before hatch or even as late as after they pip.

 

[pingu1]

I think that if they got that far there was a sudden cause in death at around day 18-19 possibly under humid although if others hatched they were maybe weak chicks that died later

 

[WalnutHill]

Does the yolk being outside of the abdomen indicate the age of death? I read two schools of thought, one being that the yolk goes into the abdomen on day 19 and the other being the yolk doesn't go into the abdomen until just before hatch or even as late as after they pip.

Cheri, there are a lot of "it depends"...

If the air cell develops properly and the incubation temperature is correct, then the yolk will withdraw during zipping and should be fully in by the time the chick kicks free of the shell.

If the temps are too low or the humidity is too high, the yolk may not retract and the chick may grow too large to escape the shell and die before hatching.

If the temps are too high or the humidity is too low, the chick may retract the yolk during struggles trying to pip or zip, and still die before hatching.

Or a chick may die before that stage, in which case not only will the yolk be present, but also albumen. This is common in upside down chicks.