Adventures in Incubating Shipped Eggs

[Morrigan]

Posted this in "guinea hatch-a-long" and since they were also shipped I will post my results here too.
View attachment 1407725 View attachment 1407726 View attachment 1407727 Today was hatch day. Shipped eggs from eBay no less. I researched sellers thoroughly and only bought from sellers with 100% feedback. Bought 13 guineas and 3 silkies. 2 silkies with blood ring on day 7. All 13 "goonies" viable and growing. I am thrilled with results. Hoping for same results with my peafowl in other incubator.

Great hatch. Is that the sole remaining silkie in the food dish?

 

[AlleysChicks]

View attachment 1407387 View attachment 1407388 View attachment 1407389 I took pictures before tucking them into the brooder for the night. The little brown one has splay leg so I put brace on it. I have another pip in the incubator.

your one silkie has light skin, was the batch you bought supposed to be pure? They are adorable anyway.

 

[Rebel58]

Great hatch. Is that the sole remaining silkie in the food dish?

Yes, he literally likes to eat from the dish. Last 4 goonies pipped and hatching now. Will be 100% hatch

 

[NNYchick]

your one silkie has light skin, was the batch you bought supposed to be pure? They are adorable anyway.

Yes I was concerned about that too. I ordered Gray Silkie and 40f smooth sizzle, so far it appears the only ones hatching are the extras she add from her paint pen. She said she had some like that and they darkened up, from her coockoos/paint. But we shall see, I think it’s too pink to be pigment holes.

 

[chantels1]

Day 4 update. Eggs from Florida (arrived late & everyone detached aircells) are starting to develop. Found embryos or signs of veins or beginning blood rings in 11 of the 16.

Eggs from Mississippi (all arrived with great aircells and on time) only saw development in the extra egg she sent. Different color. . It is still early though, so they start to develop!

 

[JohnEugene]

I live near Panama City Florida. Today we are experiencing a tropical storm. It's due to make landfall somewhat West of my location. But I am experiencing heavy rain falls off and on and occasional fairly strong gusting winds. I posted a week or so ago about the seven shipped English game fowl eggs I placed in an incubator. One of those eggs develop a blood ring and I removed it. One of them is showing very good veining patterns. The other five... it's difficult to tell yet. Anyhow, today because of the storm there was a power failure. The outage lasted close to two hours. And during that time the temperature slowly dropped 10° lower that the usual lowest to 86°. Naturally, this has me concerned. Can anyone tell me how detrimental this can be? The temperature had been averaging 100.5° with some fluctuation never below 95° or higher than 101° for very long. But, this power outage slowly brought the temperature down to 86° and there was nothing that I could do about it. The power then came back on, and the temperature fairly quickly returned to the previous 100.5°. I'm hoping for the best. Has anyone had a similar experience without fatal results?

 

[Colly1470]

I live near Panama City Florida. Today we are experiencing a tropical storm. It's due to make landfall somewhat West of my location. But I am experiencing heavy rain falls off and on and occasional fairly strong gusting winds. I posted a week or so ago about the seven shipped English game fowl eggs I placed in an incubator. One of those eggs develop a blood ring and I removed it. One of them is showing very good veining patterns. The other five... it's difficult to tell yet. Anyhow, today because of the storm there was a power failure. The outage lasted close to two hours. And during that time the temperature slowly dropped 10° lower that the usual lowest to 86°. Naturally, this has me concerned. Can anyone tell me how detrimental this can be? The temperature had been averaging 100.5° with some fluctuation never below 95° or higher than 101° for very long. But, this power outage slowly brought the temperature down to 86° and there was nothing that I could do about it. The power then came back on, and the temperature fairly quickly returned to the previous 100.5°. I'm hoping for the best. Has anyone had a similar experience without fatal results?

Our power went out during the night sometime around day 15. By the time I woke up, the temperature in the incubator had dropped to about 65°. Out of the 3 that had started to develop, 1 gosling already hatched and 2 are pipped.

 

[Morrigan]

Day 18 Update and Lockdown

I'm nearing the end of my shipped egg experiment. It's not looking so great right now. Of the 10 (!) orpington eggs I started with, I am down to two. I could see movement in these two, so they are alive as of today at least. One has a huge saddle-shaped air sac. Of the 5 maran eggs, I still have 4 in the incubator. I could see clear movement in one of them, but the shells are so dark, it is really hard to see anything, other than they look "full." One also has a huge saddled air sac. Here are 6 the survivor eggs:

I pulled the 3 which did not look great and water candled them. No movement and I performed eggtopsies. I left these as thumbnails, in case there are those who do not want to see sad little embryo remains. One of them looks to have developed as far as Day 12 or 13. The rest probably quit out by Day 8. According to a handy chart someone helpfully circulated earlier, the likely causes of Day 4 to lockdown death are:

--Improper temperature (Incubator has done an excellent job in 3 prior hatches, but did not calibrate it this year)
--Unknown power failure (I know this did not happen)
--Improper turning (I know the auto turner worked the whole time).
--Eggs from inbred stocks (????)
--Poor ventilation of hatchery or incubator (Incubator is properly ventilated)
--Disease or infected eggs (???)

If I decide to go this route again I'm going to be doing two things different.

1. I wil put 2 or 3 control eggs in from my backyard flock so can better assess whether problems were due to incubation vs. quality of stock and/or shipping stress.

2. Buy a reptile thermometer to double check incubator temperature.

2. Candle only three times: Day 7, 14 and lockdown. That's what I have always done, but the curiosity of this experiment had me more hands-on. It probably doesn't hurt, but it is one more variable that I can control.

Either I introduced some bacteria when handling the eggs -- despite carefully pre-washing -- or this was bad stock. Or perhaps the jouncing around during shipping damages the yolk just enough to prevent normal development, but not enough to stop some development. I dunno.

I'm bummed that I only have 6 eggs going into lockdown, and only 3 I know to be alive for sure. I knew it was dicey hatching shipped eggs, but knowing it, and experiencing it, are two different things.

Well, the full tale will be written in 3 days time. Hoping for one live chick, at least.

 

[Cerise1924]

View attachment 1406524 View attachment 1406526 View attachment 1406527 Egg 6 baby it all its tiny, fluffy glory. I'm totally in love.

What??? Can anything be that cute? Chicken chicks are awfully cute... but look at those little webbed feet!

 

[Cerise1924]

Hang in there! My understanding is that more developed eggs are actually less sensitive to a little cooling. And it was only a couple hours right? Very upsetting to be sure, but it could have been much worse. Try not to beat yourself up about it

Agreed!
I am sure you are worried, @TotallyShellyTurtle
Remember, the incubator going down to 82 does not mean that the internal egg temperature dropped that far. Around Day 15, my broody got confused and left her little egg alone and sat in another nest box, for between 4 and 9 hours! And she hatched a perfect chick a week later, despite the egg cooling. It had no warmth to the touch when I discovered the situation and put her back where she should be, but everything worked out just fine.