I locked mine down today (19) and I swear I heard one chirp while I was moving them. My ears ring all the time though, so it could’ve been my brain wanting to hear one chirp.
Today is day 19. I’m going to try an extra day before going to lockdown and see if that helps my hatch rate. The last one was barely over 50% with several fully developed chicks dead in shell. These are eggs from my farm and not abused by the postal service, so that’s not an excuse I can use.
I’m still here to learn and not just give people a hard time, so I’ll ask this. I’ve hatched a lot of chicks that look like this that were not mottled. What has you convinced that these freshly hatched ones will be mottled?