At 96 degrees you will generally have a high morality rate (i.e. unsuccessful). for us to help we need an idea of how you built your incubator, as in what are you using to heat it with now..what kind of material the bator itself is etc.
We just hatched several from our quail eggs that had been in our fridge for just as long or longer and they did surprisingly well. Lost one to trying to pip way too early and one that was stuck in egg too long (we don't assist generally), but other than it went pretty well.
Let them go a couple days like you said...sorry to hear no progress. Things can change rapidly though too. I have a batch that I havent seen much in, that will hit day 17 officially in a few hours, but out of nowhere they're starting to pip externally left and right. Last night there was no...
Average is around the 17 day mark (remember the day you set is day 0, not 1). My last batch I got anywhere from day 16 to like day 23 with most of them on days 17 to 19.
Edited for spelling
I dropped one once as we were about to lock down. I caught it but it detached the air cell..totally felt like crap but thankfully the chick turned out fine. In fact she's been dropping eggs for me left and right lately.
Everyone definitely does thing different. You will always be told...
How rough are you handling your eggs?! It's no worse than any other day. Only issues with candleing that late is try not to open incubator if there are external pips, and the big one..don't drop the egg! :D
I know! We totally screwed up and didn't record anything..soon as these guys are old enough to give me some more eggs though I'll do it again! We were too focused on helping the kids learn to incubate eggs that we kind of spaced documenting anything which we super regret