I had two batches of eggs going at the same time, one in the incubator and one under a broody hen. The ones under the broody hen were at about day 18 yesterday when we lost her to the chomp-chomp munch-munch gang. The eggs were left outside for probably 12-18 hours (high of 71, low of 45 yesterday) When we found them I went ahead and put them in the incubator with the hatching chicks. Do you think there is any chance any of these will hatch at this point? The other batch, 41 in all, we sent to the school for the kindergarten class to hatch. Well for some reason, the teacher at some point turned down the incubator to 94 degrees and never added any more water. My DW checked the chicks on day 20, picked up the chicks that were already hatched and fluffed on day 21 and brought the incubator and remainng chicks home on day 22, but didn't think to check the temperature or humidity at any time when at the school. When I got home, I found out about the low temp, the empty water reservoir, and the humidity was at 20%. I added water and turned it up at that time. The first 26 chickes hatched fine, but the last 3 that hatched have been out over 12-24 hours and are dry, but still wet looking. Three more are pipped or partially unzipped, but the membranes look awfully dry. Is there anything we can do to help the 3 hatched chicks fluff up or the remaining chicks hatch? I am afraid they may have dried out and stuck to the membrane in the shells. Mark
the eggs might survive as for the dry ones try wrapping the in some damp warm paper towels and put back in the bator and cross your fingers.
I am reading Storey's book on raising chickens, and there is a section on what to do if your power goes out when you are incubating. She (the author, Gail Damerow) states that power outages of up to 12 hours may not affect the hatch, other than delaying it. She also says that if the power does go out, that you should open the lid, instead of trying to keep the bator warm by putting blankets over it. She says cooled eggs can go dormant. It's a very interesting read. Anyway, my point is that if the eggs were cooled for a period, due to a power outage, or something eating mama (poor hen!)... the eggs may have a shot at making it! Keep us posted!
