2nd time hatching and not good at all

[bluenkimchi]

It's my second time hatching in my home made incubator and i had 8 silkie eggs in there. It was supposed to hatched yesterday day 21 and now day 22, i just checked again as i heard no peeps again. So this morning I checked the remaining eggs that were developed and the're dead. Out of the 8 eggs 3 duds 5 fully developed chicks inside all dead. I don't know what i did wrong, I follow all the steps. Though there were two times it spiked to 106 degrees but that's early on like the first week then temp was constant 98-100 degree through out the remaining time. Any advice for my next batch of eggs that is coming maybe tomorrow or Thursday so that it won't happen again?

 

[kizanne]

How was your humidity? Did you open your bator from day 18 through day 22? From Lowe's I got a cheap electronic thermometer/hygrometer One nice feature is it tells you your high and lows while you were gone. I still use a mercury thermometer jsut to make sure.

Hatching (day 18-22) is more about humidity than temp. You don't want high spikes but it can get alittle low and won't hurt to much. But humidity becomes real important so that the chicks can break their membrane. You want it high like 65 to 70% humidity but not so much that it will condensate in the egg maybe drowning them.

You said dead in shell had they internally pipped? Was the air space too large (indicating too low of humidity during day 1-18). Did you have a hatch plan. I use the dry hatch method but there are others. There is also a thread labeled eggtopsy I believe that can help diagnose problems.

I'm not an expert but I think I understand the basics and have several hatches under my belt and would be happy to try to help you figure this out. I run an LG but on my list is a homemade incubator because I think I can make a nicer one.

 

[greycat]

if you are using a home built incubator (as I do myself) you need redundancy in your thermostats
to prevent the low & high spikes and to be able to maintain steady accurate temps. I would recommend at least a dual wafer type thermostat set up wired in series ( I use a triple set up in mine)

If you are using a heat source that gets hot very quickly and turns on then off rapidly you might consider changing that. more is not better in this case. you need a gentle heat source that can maintain your temp setting without spiking . A heat source that is too hot or has too high wattage will still continue to raise your temp. even after the thermostat setting has been satisfied.

I would also recommend at least 2 thermometers to be sure the calibration is not off there too.

Gentle - Steady - Accurate is key to good hatches

 

[dl9976]

The spike to 106 should not have effected unless it was for a long period of time like over an hour.... besides you said you had full developed chicks that were dead so that means it was towards the end you had the problem...if your humidty was not at least over 50% ..should be 60% then that could be why they didnt hatch...also, i have had therms that were wrong...your temp could have been too low in fact?

i use 3 therm in seperate places thru out the bator...and i can not stress enough how important that humidity is...you can open the bator duriong the days 18-21 as long as you dont have any peeps...but be sure to close it right back! hope this helps

 

[bluenkimchi]

Thanks for all the advice, the humidity for hatching was fine. I use a digital thermometer(acu rite) that i got from OSH that tells your highs and lows from an hour if the temp went up or down and also has built in hydrometer. No the chick didn't even pipped at all, the air space is fine not too big. I guessing it could be the temp that was the cause since it wasn't always the constant 99.5 that it should be. I have a ? is using a egg carton for the first 18 days better or just laying on their sides like the natural state better?

 

[tadpole98]

Thanks for all the advice, the humidity for hatching was fine. I use a digital thermometer(acu rite) that i got from OSH that tells your highs and lows from an hour if the temp went up or down and also has built in hydrometer. No the chick didn't even pipped at all, the air space is fine not too big. I guessing it could be the temp that was the cause since it wasn't always the constant 99.5 that it should be. I have a ? is using a egg carton for the first 18 days better or just laying on their sides like the natural state better?

I have mine laying at their sides