This is my first guinea incubation and hatch. My eggs are at day 21-23 what are folks referring to by "Lock Down"?? and pipping?
I have raised the humidity up to about 80 % the digital temp and humidity is not accurate and I have regulated the tempature with a regular glass themomtor that came with the incubator. I raised the humidity because it looks like some of the eggs might be starting to hatch. Several eggs I collected were sat on by the chicken hens and we had a huge heat wave in California during the same time that could have started the incubation process prior to my putting the eggs in the incubator.
I can see several eggs with tiny shell fractures and doing my best at candling with a flash light can see several with slanted air pockets at the top of the eggs. I also have 3 duck eggs hatching with these and all 3 of those eggs have slanted air pockets for sure.
There is one egg that has some liquid dots forming on the top of the egg that are coming out of the egg and I can see tiny fractures down the sides of the egg as I sat and watched the egg for a while the liquid had tiny bubbles that appeard like something inside was causing pressure that was forcing the dots of liquid out of the shell. Any ideas??
The bubbling liquid dots coming out of an egg is probably a rotten, seeping egg... and that egg may explode at any time. Remove it, and handle with EXTREME care!! If there's a bad smell to it, put it in a zip lock bag and gently dispose of it right away, or bury it. If it does not smell then you can carefully candle it to check for any sign of life, but my guess is that you have a rotten egg. I call those "MayPops"... as in may explode.You do NOT want that blowing up in your face or in your incubator, believe me, lol.
Lockdown is the last 3 days of incubation, when you raise the humidity for hatch... and the term "lockdown" actually means do not open the incubator until the hatch is over. You want that warm moist air to stay in there so the shells stay softer and the inner membranes stay moist.
Pipping is when the keets that are developed far enough along to be ready to start hatching start pecking the inside of the shell and cracking it. Sometime it's just a crack at first, other times there is an obvious peck mark sticking up on the surface of the shell.
At this point, with pipped eggs... if I were you I would leave the incubator closed, stop candling the eggs and just let them hatch. You do want some fresh air flow coming into the incubator from the vents in the incubator, but the more cool dry air you expose the eggs to by opening the incubator the less of a chance there is of the keets hatching successfully. Every time cool dry air gets to the eggs you run the risk of the inner membrane shrinking down over the keets, making it difficult or impossible for the keets to hatch, or even suffocating them.
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