240 quail hatch

[Darkestcon]

Did you candle at day 14 and remove the clears or are they still in there with the rest of the eggs?

We did not candle at 14. we only candled a dozen eggs throughout the process. We either arent knowledgeable enough or our light sucks or both. When we did candle we couldnt see any actual details. We could see if it was red/had something in it or if it was clear. But with 240 eggs we were uncomfortable candling all of them due to the amount of time we would have to have the door open. Thus exposing the eggs to a lot of lower temp and humidity.

We figured we would find out after the hatch. There are quite a few that are empty. As of this moment we have 130 birds. We had 10 broken when they arrived (visible) and we have found another 13 through this process that had hairline cracks in them (not from birds) or small holes that we didnt notice when loading the incubator. 1 bird pipped and died. so 154 eggs at this time are acounted for. Today is the 18th day and we will not be continuing after this day. we had 5 hatch overnight 3 with curled toes, one magically has a broken leg. so its not looking good for hatching after today

 

[mdees88]

It will be very obvious at day 14 whether they are infertile or not. Either they are clear or you can't see through them and they have an air pocket at the top. I don't candle any sooner because it is diffucult to see veins and such.

I would pull one plastic tray out of the incubator at a time and candle the eggs. Trash the clears and put the dark ones in your hatching tray. The lower temp/humidity will not hurt them at day 14 and you will only have each tray out of the incubator for 2 or 3 minutes. You will end up discarding around 10-30% of the eggs and this creates more room for your chick's to hatch.

Sounds like a very good hatch....I bet 80% of the eggs left in the incubator will end up being clears

 

[Darkestcon]

It will be very obvious at day 14 whether they are infertile or not. Either they are clear or you can't see through them and they have an air pocket at the top. I don't candle any sooner because it is diffucult to see veins and such.

I would pull one plastic tray out of the incubator at a time and candle the eggs. Trash the clears and put the dark ones in your hatching tray. The lower temp/humidity will not hurt them at day 14 and you will only have each tray out of the incubator for 2 or 3 minutes. You will end up discarding around 10-30% of the eggs and this creates more room for your chick's to hatch.

Sounds like a very good hatch....I bet 80% of the eggs left in the incubator will end up being clears

Yeah i know the fertile/infertile are easy to spot. just the time concern. wasnt sure of affect. The room would have been nice.

And i know some of the ones left are "fertile" as their is some weight. But many are infertile. We werent expecting too much. The eggs were shipped after all and shipping alone CAN damage them. The last batch we had alot of the eggs were "scrambled" So says james marie farms after he had us crack em and describe and send pics of what was going on inside.

Our goal was to get 60 quail for our battery system 15 males 45 females. its looking like we will have 90 left over after the 30 we have sold are gone. We hope that 90 will provide enough bodies to get the male female ratio we need.

 

[Darkestcon]

best pic we could get at this time sooooo many chicks.

 

[Darkestcon]

Robert: James Marie Farms: "Misting eggs is done by people who open and close the incubator during hatch (just cant help themselves) if you follow the general rule of lockdown and do not open there is no need to do any misting."

After chatting with him it seems that Misting is used to attempt to correct a human %^*& up by overcompensating moisture. The problem i see is that by misting the eggs even if humidity "reads" 60% the eggs are way above that due to direct contact with moisture. It can absolutely work out fine but it can also cause problems is my take. I am picking his brain to get definitive answers from an expert as to when birds should be pulled, how often, etc. Figured id share what Robert had to say. Some i already got like temp should be 100 ours is 100.5 he says thats fine. As for humidity he says 50-55% and he says no need to increase humidity during hatch. as when the birds hatch they increase humidity on their own. These are tweaks that will be applied to my future hatches as each one is a learning process.

 

[Darkestcon]

Hatch results Day 18

GQF incubator 1502 sportsman
Tempt 100-100.5
Humidity 50 for uncubation 60 at hatch. Highest during process 65

240 Eggs
20 broken or cracked on ship
40-48 non fertile
126 hatched 1 bow legged curled toed, 1 broken leg (?)

if my math is right thats 54 remaining eggs in incubator with weight to them. No pips no cracks. will give em the rest of the day and depending on what my daughter says maybe MAYBE 1 more day.

Totals 240 eggs 126 hatched for 52.6% roughly hatched out of all eggs.
180 possible hatching eggs fertile non cracked. 126 hatched 70% hatch rate
240 eggs 40-48 non fertile is a 20% non fertility

I figure percentage could have been higher had i not opened door on first day to change the flooring material from Dac to fine screen. However i think that the loss was acceptable as the birds got 0 footing on dac paper and within moments of being on screen were able to walk fine and straighten toes. So a loss in overall bird count so that i didnt have many more with bow legs or curl toed issues that i would have had to fix or maybe not been able to fix resulting in a larger loss of bird.

thanks to input from those who posted. I have some ideas for future hatches (next one is 1 week 3 days from now) learned from a few errors like flooring and opening the door. Ways to free up space (day 14 candling and removing all infertile). So i hope that my future hatches will be better than this one though this one was pretty good. Thanks all for the input and maybe ill track my next hatch on here as well.

 

[RosieR]

Hatch results Day 18

GQF incubator 1502 sportsman
Tempt 100-100.5
Humidity 50 for uncubation 60 at hatch. Highest during process 65

240 Eggs
20 broken or cracked on ship
40-48 non fertile
126 hatched 1 bow legged curled toed, 1 broken leg (?)

if my math is right thats 54 remaining eggs in incubator with weight to them. No pips no cracks. will give em the rest of the day and depending on what my daughter says maybe MAYBE 1 more day.

Totals 240 eggs 126 hatched for 52.6% roughly hatched out of all eggs.
180 possible hatching eggs fertile non cracked. 126 hatched 70% hatch rate
240 eggs 40-48 non fertile is a 20% non fertility

I figure percentage could have been higher had i not opened door on first day to change the flooring material from Dac to fine screen. However i think that the loss was acceptable as the birds got 0 footing on dac paper and within moments of being on screen were able to walk fine and straighten toes. So a loss in overall bird count so that i didnt have many more with bow legs or curl toed issues that i would have had to fix or maybe not been able to fix resulting in a larger loss of bird.

thanks to input from those who posted. I have some ideas for future hatches (next one is 1 week 3 days from now) learned from a few errors like flooring and opening the door. Ways to free up space (day 14 candling and removing all infertile). So i hope that my future hatches will be better than this one though this one was pretty good. Thanks all for the input and maybe ill track my next hatch on here as well.

This has been very informative, thank you for sharing

 

[asmiley3]

i know this is a older posting. just wondering how your future hatches turned out with the information you gathered from this thread?