Update. The Great Debate: Is it the incubator or the egg?

[Jungleexplorer]

Update! Well, I have two more chicks. I had to break the last two out. I let one set with a hole in it for 24 hours before getting the chick out. He was side ways in the shell. I don't know what position chicks are normally supposed to be in, but I always thought they were supposed to be positioned long ways (head at one end and feet on the other). I delivered the first chick last night. He was a little stick so I quickly washed him up with some warm water and a cotton swab before the glue could dry.. He cleaned up nicely, but he was really tired. But this morning he is strong and running around. One started piping yesterday afternoon and got a bout half way and stopped. This morning he was still alive but looking weak was not peeping at all. I decided to go in and get him. Good thing! I guess with the big hole he made, he started to dry him out and was stuck to the shell. He is really weak. I don't know if he will make it.

So I have official broken every rule of lockdown. But hey, I have had my best hatch ever, even if this last chick does not make it. The most important thing is that, there is a lot to be learned from all of this.

The number one thing I learned is that I need less humidity during incubation. With six out of eight chicks hatching sticky, it is clear my humidity was too high during incubation. Right?

 

[PAchickenlover]

Some times you just have to do things that they suggest not to. I have seen some of my hens help their chicks out of their eggs so I really don't think it is that bad of a thing to do. I hope your chick makes it! Good luck.

 

[yinepu]

Update! Well, I have two more chicks. I had to break the last two out. I let one set with a hole in it for 24 hours before getting the chick out. He was side ways in the shell. I don't know what position chicks are normally supposed to be in, but I always thought they were supposed to be positioned long ways (head at one end and feet on the other). I delivered the first chick last night. He was a little stick so I quickly washed him up with some warm water and a cotton swab before the glue could dry.. He cleaned up nicely, but he was really tired. But this morning he is strong and running around. One started piping yesterday afternoon and got a bout half way and stopped. This morning he was still alive but looking weak was not peeping at all. I decided to go in and get him. Good thing! I guess with the big hole he made, he started to dry him out and was stuck to the shell. He is really weak. I don't know if he will make it.

So I have official broken every rule of lockdown. But hey, I have had my best hatch ever, even if this last chick does not make it. The most important thing is that, there is a lot to be learned from all of this.

The number one thing I learned is that I need less humidity during incubation. With six out of eight chicks hatching sticky, it is clear my humidity was too high during incubation. Right?

yup.. your incubation humidity was way too high.. so try the dry incubation method then see how they do at lockdown.. heck.. this spring has been so wet I'm not even adding water at lockdown and still getting 100% hatch rates on chickens As the first chick hatches the humidity shoots up and I haven't had to assist a single chick even though I have not added a drop of water at lockdown and have been running the bator dry..(i do up the humidity for turkeys.. but they are a different critter). The main difference for me this year is that it's the end of April and we STILL have green grass outside!!! plus we've had several storms (keeping my fingers crossed that we don't get another drought this year).

NOTE: I am not suggesting a dry lockdown/hatch for everyone.. just said it's working for me now in the conditions that are going on in my home
Also when I suggested to Jungleexplorer that they try a dry lockdown with these chicks it was of a specific problem they were having with this hatch (too many drowning chicks) i also told them to be on the lookout for sticky chicks which they did encounter (again the sticky chicks were due to too high humidity during incubation)
If it looks like you will lose every chick trying to fix a bad incubation then that's the time to try experimenting with an unorthodox method.. the worst that can happen is that you will lose the chicks.. but if you will lose them anyway why not try something completely different..

Congrats on your new babies Jungle.. I'm glad the experiment worked as well as it did.. hopefully the weak chick makes it.. but if not just think of how many you did manage to save this time around!

 

[yinepu]

Some times you just have to do things that they suggest not to. I have seen some of my hens help their chicks out of their eggs so I really don't think it is that bad of a thing to do. I hope your chick makes it! Good luck.

Exactly.. every hatch is never the same unless you have a climate controlled room where the incubator can sit unaffected by any outside influences... and even then bacteria can still destroy a hatch

Pretty much what i do is follow my gut instincts.. I've been hatching out chicks all my life and my family has been hatching out birds for hundreds of years.. we learned a long time ago to pay attention to the air cells as well as the climate.. then adjust things as they need to be.. and sometimes that means taking an unorthodox approach to a hatch. Experience has told me that many new people to hatching (or people with new untried and untrusted bators) tend to run their humidity way to high... so the first thing is to look at the unhatched chicks and see what happened to them during incubation.. then adjust things from there.. and if one thing doesn't work.. then try others until you've eliminated every possibility.. and once you get your hatch rates to come out to 90 or 100% then be on the lookout for any new variables and adjust as needed.

 

[Jungleexplorer]

Well, I thought the last one was just about dead. He was just laying there not moving, but still breathing. When I reached in to pick him up, he was hard as a rock. He did not look sticky, but he was covered with a light layer of hard glue. No wonder he could not move. I got my kitchen faucet running just slightly warm to touch and put his body under it and washed him off using a cotton swab to wipe his head. He immediately perked up. He is up on his feet now in the incubator. He is wobbly, but I think he might make it. Living and learning. From now on, if I have a sticky chick, I am using the faucet technique. It works like a charm and is a lot less stressful then swabbing the delicate chick which could injure it. And there is no chance of the chick getting chilled because it is totally immersed in warm water, accept for it's head of course.

 

[Jungleexplorer]

I want to thank everyone for their excellent advice. I want to second yinepu's comment about this not being a recommended method of incubation. This thread is mostly about the things you can try, when you have not incubated properly, as I did.

This a long thread, so I will give a synopsis of what happened and what I did to try and save my chicks. It is important to understand that I am running a continues incubation system where I put about 14 new eggs in the incubator every seven days. On day 18, I candle the eggs and move the developed ones to the hatcher (just another 1588 incubator) to hatch them out. So, every seven days I am moving eggs to the hatcher. This gives me five days for lockdown and a day to clean up the hatcher and get it stabilized for the next batch. This hatch is the second batch that has come out of the incubator since I started this process. Almost all of the first batch drowned, but I did not discover this until the day before I was supposed to move the next batch into the incubator; because lockdown is a five day process and I did not break the unhatched eggs open until day six and that is when I discovered that the chicks had drowned. So, at that point I began this thread to discover what went wrong and what I could do to try and save the next batch that were about to go into the hatcher, which had been incubated in the same way the batch before were, that drowned.

The Situation. Chicks too wet going into lockdown.
The Solution I tried. Running a dry lockdown below 20% humidity to try and dry out the eggs a little before they piped.
The Result. A lot of sticky, but alive, chicks.

The Problem: Sticky Chicks.
The Best Solution I tried: Washing sticky chicks (not the head) under running water (kitchen faucet) that has been adjusted to about 100 degrees (I set it slightly warm to touch, but using a medical thermometer would be better). I used gentle strokes with a wet cotton swab to clean the chicks head.

The Final Result. Out of 14 eggs I have 8 chicks. Two eggs never developed (not fertile or something). Two eggs were late quitters. Two eggs have not hatched for reason I will determine tomorrow (probably drowned). Eight live healthy chicks.

I want to add that these chicks are Gamefowl chicks and may be not as delicate as some breeds and may be able to withstand a little more abuse.

 

[yinepu]

I want to thank everyone for their excellent advice. I want to second yinepu's comment about this not being a recommended method of incubation. This thread is mostly about the things you can try, when you have not incubated properly, as I did.

This a long thread, so I will give a synopsis of what happened and what I did to try and save my chicks. It is important to understand that I am running a continues incubation system where I put about 14 new eggs in the incubator every seven days. On day 18, I candle the eggs and move the developed ones to the hatcher (just another 1588 incubator) to hatch them out. So, every seven days I am moving eggs to the hatcher. This gives me five days for lockdown and a day to clean up the hatcher and get it stabilized for the next batch. This hatch is the second batch that has come out of the incubator since I started this process. Almost all of the first batch drowned, but I did not discover this until the day before I was supposed to move the next batch into the incubator; because lockdown is a five day process and I did not break the unhatched eggs open until day six and that is when I discovered that the chicks had drowned. So, at that point I began this thread to discover what went wrong and what I could do to try and save the next batch that were about to go into the hatcher, which had been incubated in the same way the batch before were, that drowned.

The Situation. Chicks too wet going into lockdown.
The Solution I tried. Running a dry lockdown below 20% humidity to try and dry out the eggs a little before they piped.
The Result. A lot of sticky, but alive, chicks.

The Problem: Sticky Chicks.
The Best Solution I tried: Washing sticky chicks (not the head) under running water (kitchen faucet) that has been adjusted to about 100 degrees (I set it slightly warm to touch, but using a medical thermometer would be better). I used gentle strokes with a wet cotton swab to clean the chicks head.

The Final Result. Out of 14 eggs I have 8 chicks. Two eggs never developed (not fertile or something). Two eggs were late quitters. Two eggs have not hatched for reason I will determine tomorrow (probably drowned). Eight live healthy chicks.

I want to add that these chicks are Gamefowl chicks and may be not as delicate as some breeds and may be able to withstand a little more abuse.

excellent post Jungle.. you may want to update your first post in the thread to contain all that info (as you know many people will just read the first post in a thread and that way they can also see how things turned out for you and your chicks)

And once again.. congrats on those new babies!

 

[yinepu]

Well, I thought the last one was just about dead. He was just laying there not moving, but still breathing. When I reached in to pick him up, he was hard as a rock. He did not look sticky, but he was covered with a light layer of hard glue. No wonder he could not move. I got my kitchen faucet running just slightly warm to touch and put his body under it and washed him off using a cotton swab to wipe his head. He immediately perked up. He is up on his feet now in the incubator. He is wobbly, but I think he might make it. Living and learning. From now on, if I have a sticky chick, I am using the faucet technique. It works like a charm and is a lot less stressful then swabbing the delicate chick which could injure it. And there is no chance of the chick getting chilled because it is totally immersed in warm water, accept for it's head of course.

if he's still a little weak later on you can try giving him something like save a chick in his water (heck.. they could all benefit from it) or if that's not available add a little sugar or poly-vi-sol (without iron) to their drinking water as a little boost to make sure he starts eating and hopefully regains some of that lost strength

 

[Jungleexplorer]

I started using Save- A- Chick about two weeks ago in brooder water for all my chicks. I stumbled on it at TSC. Thanks for the advice anyway.

 

[Jungleexplorer]

excellent post Jungle.. you may want to update your first post in the thread to contain all that info (as you know many people will just read the first post in a thread and that way they can also see how things turned out for you and your chicks)

And once again.. congrats on those new babies!

Great idea! Will do.