Hey Hippichick, sorry to hear that. Is there anything you can do to improve the bator? It always seems like a humidity issue. There's got to be a better way to improve on that, even when you open the bator.
Here's what I noticed, if there is a slight drop on humidity, the membrane starts to have a shrink wrap affect on the baby and causes pressure on the surrounding baby. Limiting its ability to breathe or move. So the obvious solution is to try to maintain a high humidity during the last 3 days, even if the bator is open once or twice. Just my thoughts.
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I have a Hovabator 1588 forced air with turner. I had other eggs in the bator with these. The ones that did hatch did so with no problems. I didn't pull any chicks out of the bator until 8 or 9 hatched, then I had to because they were really beating those eggs up. But I really didn't have any humidity problems throughout the hatch. A couple of people thought maybe my temp was a little too high because my chicks started hatching at 19 days. But I find my bantams always hatch early. What day did your chicks start hatching?
I made my bator out of wood and with the guide of MissPrissy's build your own bator info. BTW Thank you MissPrissy..
The 2 eggs that pipped at day 19, were the ones that didn't make it. The 8 eggs that did make it, pipped on on day 20 and 21.
I did notice the left side of my bator was running at 100.7 and the right was at 99.5. The 8 eggs that hatched healthy chicks were sitting in the middle of the bator. The ones on either side just plain died after pipping. It was an interesting learning lesson for me. If I somehow I managed the temps to be even on both sides, I really think all the eggs would have hatched at the same time and all be healthy and alive.
I could almost be addicted to hatching eggs. It was fun and you get a prize at the end, hehehe.