9 eggs...Day 9...only two embryos moving

[debbie50chicks]

This is my first attempt at hatching eggs in my home made incubator. I've kept the temp between 99 and 102. Humidity has been between 45% and 50%. If I only see for sure two embryonic movements...how long should I wait to discard the eggs I'm not seeing any movement? This is my first time candling, but it was very easy to see blood vessels, yoke sack and embryos. Most of the embryos seemed to start out fine with good veining...but experienced an early death (I think). Because I'm an OB nurse I pretty much know what I'm looking for. But yet I'm still not sure if I need to keep them in the incubator. Any suggestions?

 

[fastbird]

Go to the learning center and look up the egg candeling pics, looking for an egg with a blood ring.
Smell the eggs and if none smell rotten, don't give up quite yet. I had 6 eggs I marked out of 30 in my incubator this spring because I couldn't tell if there was life in them or not. They all hatched. I had a couple that gave up but much later in the incubation and not one was a marked egg. They were candled and marked at 12 days.

 

[MeepBeep]

I take questionable eggs at that early stage and put them off to the side but still inside the incubator... Sometimes it's clearly (in more ways than one) that the egg is a dud other times you just are not getting a good candling view... I candle again about 3 days before they are due before I toss them as it's dead obvious at that time what ones were early quitters... Sometimes the darker or thicker shelled eggs are tricky to candle...

 

[debbie50chicks]

Thank you very much for your input and now I'm a little more encouraged. :-D None of the eggs smell bad and I see no blood ring. Air pockets are all visible. I see what appears to be the embryo (small dark spot) but no movement in most of them. There are two that have vigorous movements. I'm still holding out hope now. Thank you so much!

 

[debbie50chicks]

Thank you! I have them arranged so that even with turning I keep the two eggs with moving embryos in the center. Most of my eggs are the darker brown so maybe I'm just not seeing clear enough. I love this site.....so informative, and so many nice people! Glad I found BYC!

 

[debbie50chicks]

Will I start to smell something bad if the are about to explode? I want to try to remove them before that happens. I did go to the learning center. Lots of good pics there. Still not sure what its suppose to look like if its going to explode. I dont want my good eggs to get contaminated.

 

[MeepBeep]

In theory they should not explode until well after hatch date (for an obvious reason aka brooder hens don't candle their eggs

to know what ones to toss), off course sometimes that theory doesn't hold true...

 

[debbie50chicks]

Update on 9 incubating eggs. They are 14 days old and I candled them to see at least 4 moving embryos. I'm so excited! 4 days to lock down! That's going to be hard for me as I have candled them every day since day 7. Updates to follow...

 

[debbie50chicks]

Update...day 22! This morning I looked in the incubator and have one chick hatched. YAAAAY! I'M A MOTHER! Second egg hatching...captured on video but I forgot how to post pictures. Can someone remind me please.

 

[debbie50chicks]

My first hatched babies from my homemade incubator! July 15th 2 chicks....July 19th 1 chick. There was too much fluctuations in temperature and humidity or I would have had more chicks. Now I'm in the market for a manufactured incubator. I would love to know what bators you all are using. I would like to do about a dozen at a time. Here's some pictures of my new chicks. They are all suppose to be BR's but there are some obvious differences.