5 days til hatch, horrible smell

[docdubz]

My incubator has 5 days left on the latest hatch and when I woke up this morning the house stunk of rotten eggs. None of the eggs in the incubator are cracked and its hard to say that the smell is definitely coming from it but I cant think of anything else that would be smelling like this.

So far Ive been pretty horrible at candling, how can I tell if any of the eggs are in fact rotten?

 

[KyKyMarie77]

From my experience(keep in mind I’ve only hatched three batches and all have been by mama hens), if the eggs are a solid fully dark color on the inside then they are usually rotten. The ones with viable chicks in them have a little air sack and you can also see the veins. I would definitely wait for more expert advice though, because I have been struggling on how to tell as well.

 

[Swbertrand1]

Pretty sure you have one or more dead eggs in the incubator. At this stage of incubation, the chick will fill a good portion of the shell. You should be able to candle the eggs and see clear signs of movement of the chick inside, the fluids around the chick, and the air sac toward the fatter end of the egg. We hatch chicks each spring and check our eggs periodically in the following manner:

We start by making the room dark where the incubator is located so there is little ambient light - easier to see what's going on in the egg. Quickly openthe incubator and gently removing a single egg, then close the incubator. Hold a bright headlamp or flashlight under the egg as you gently rotate it in your hand over the light. Hold the egg right on the light, moving the egg around about a 1/4 turn at a time. After each 1/4 turn, hold the egg stationary for 5-10 seconds, and you should see significant movement inside the egg; we even gently scratch on the eggs with a fingernail to create a little "noise" for the chick to react too if we don't initially see movement. If you don't see movement, replace the egg, but note which one it is and come back to it.

Do this for all the eggs you have to rule out live eggs versus dead eggs. Once you've gone through all of them, go back to those with no movement since the chicks do have periods of inactivity in the shell. Check those eggs again. If after repeated attempts with no movement, you can do one of two things: 1) try again a bit later with those questionable eggs to be certain, or 2 remove them from the incubator at this time.

Another 20 minutes to wait to see if the egg is alive is not going to change anything with the incubation of the good eggs, so we usually leave the eggs a bit longer then come back to check a 3rd or 4th time to be sure.

It's good to have a second person for this operation to assist with opening/closing the incubator too, and be careful not to drop the eggs!!!

Final note: if you've got multiple eggs that are not viable, you should check your incubator temperature carefully, usually with multiple thermometers as they're not all accurate...