About to incubate. A few years since I last did!

[aart]

The use of an extra thermometer (calibrated by the fact that it matched the others!) was just an extra precaution.

'Calibration' is not matching another therm, but testing/comparing against a known accurate therm(like a human medical thermometer)

 

[aart]

Do you have one of these?
View attachment 1758466
If so, try this:
View attachment 1758468

If it reads low you will know you need to re-calibrate everything.

Very complex, especially for home hatchers....but interesting for sure.

 

[casportpony]

Very complex, especially for home hatchers....but interesting for sure.

I am a home hatcher and when I set my incubator to 99.5 and eggs don't read 99.5 using the Braun, then I know I need to take a look at the calibration of my devices.

 

[nbuuifx]

Today was day 7.

I candled and weighed the eggs.

According to my calulations the eggs should have averaged 40.7g - they are currently averaging 40.5g.

Is that close enough or should I be increasing humidity slightly?

Candling shows a clear air pocket in each egg.
The two larger leghorn eggs look to have lines inside the shell - so I'm confident that these have chicks starting to grow in them.
The bantam eggs, I expected would be easier to see as they have lighter shells. However I couldn't see as much in these. Of the 13 Bantam eggs 2 of them looked different to the others - I'm pretty sure these two haven't developed. The other 11 looked to have darker less regular shaped yolks that moved slower when the eggs were rotated. I can't see any of the blood vessel lines.

I've put them all back in but I'm hoping that the fact that 11 were different to the two that look dud means that some development is going on. I seem to remember that I've never had that much luck at candling at 7 days, except for one batch where they were really clear.

I plan to candle and weigh on day 10 and 14 so I hope to see some more development by then.

 

[aart]

Is that close enough or should I be increasing humidity slightly?

I prefer to trace the air cells and go by eye against the illustration.
Remember it's humidity average over the duration is what counts,
hard to pinpoint keeping it at an exact number.
....and different eggs may lose moisture at different rates.

I plan to candle and weigh on day 10 and 14 so I hope to see some more development by then.

Good plan......you should see veins in all by now, but waiting until day 10 should confirm.

 

[nbuuifx]

Day 10 today.

Not looking great - The bantam eggs don't seem to have developed at all.

The 2 leghorn eggs look fine - One was very clear and I could see the chick clearly moving around. The other was similar size but movement wasn't as clear.

The 13 various bantam eggs look like they just have the yolk floating around inside.

So not good at all, don't know why the bantams have been so poor. The farm I had them from hatches 100s of them.

Fingers crossed the 2 that look viable make it to the end.

 

[nbuuifx]

All on lock down now. Humidity increased. When I last candled the 2 viable eggs they were both moving around a lot but one chick had barely any room except the air sac - the other seemed to have a good bit of spare room.

Weight loss has been with 0.2g per egg throughout.

Think I'm going to have to get another batch of eggs though as it has been rather disappointing to have so many infertile eggs! The place I had the eggs from has said he'll give me another batch but I'm thinking I may be better going elsewhere.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

All on lock down now. Humidity increased. When I last candled the 2 viable eggs they were both moving around a lot but one chick had barely any room except the air sac - the other seemed to have a good bit of spare room.

Weight loss has been with 0.2g per egg throughout.

Think I'm going to have to get another batch of eggs though as it has been rather disappointing to have so many infertile eggs! The place I had the eggs from has said he'll give me another batch but I'm thinking I may be better going elsewhere.

I put some marans in lockdown this morning! Just got done this morning with 13 hatching out of 15! 8 Ayam Cemanis and 5 Blue Marans. (That was after candling just before lockdown to throw 5 bad ones out). Looking forward to seeing your babies!

 

[nbuuifx]

Hmmmm,

Well today was day 21.

Looked at them this morning and one had a Y shape large crack on the side and the other had a pip on the rear. Humidity was just under 60% according to the gauge. I've added warm water to raise it over 70%.

So they pipped sometime between 5pm last night and 7am this morning.

However things have barely changed over the day.

The one with the Y shape crack has managed to increase the size of the crack and was starting to lift the large V shape up (each side is about 10-15mm long) - it seems to be quite vocal.

The other one just has a small pip, it doesn't seem to be moving.

I don't know quite how long it has been now since they pipped - it is somewhere between 13 hours and 27 hours.

Do I just leave them until morning to see what has happened by then? Or should I be doing anything else?

I'm not with them at the moment but can pop back to ensure humidity is correct if needed. Or do I just leave them alone?!

 

[nbuuifx]

I ended up leaving the eggs until this morning so that guaranteed they had been pipped longer than 24 hours.

By this morning the one with the Y shaped crack had fully hatched and fluffed up and look healthy.

The other one had pipped on the opposite side to it's initial pip and its beak was poking out. I could see a little weak breathing but it didn't look great. There was a little clicking sound but not chirping.

I could see part of the lining and it had dried and gone yellow so I decided to remove part of the shell to check on it, on removing the first part I found that the lining had dried out and was basically shrink wrapping the chick. I wet this and I have removed some of this but it still doesn't look hopeful.

It has started chirping and it has pushed its legs out but its head remains tucked in. Humidity is currently at 75%.

It occasional chirps now and does have a push every so often but it looks very weak. I'm not really holding out too much hope. Is there anything I can now do to support it further or do I just leave it to see what happens?

I'm a bit worried about ending up only having one chick to raise.