Air cell vanished

[Sarjeanp]

Me again! I have a lot going on with the duck eggs and chicken eggs, so I apologize for blowing up this site! My chick eggs have been hatching...One on Friday, one on Saturday, and one on Sunday. There are still two remaining eggs under her. No activity. I am not positive on the dates, but what I DO know, is that I marked them all on the 9th, when I decided to let her continue to sit and brood. I am racking my brain if it's possible that these 2 remaining eggs could have been laid ON the 9th and simply got marked a couple of hours later. Making today day 22, if that was the case. Yesterday, I candled the blue egg (The one I want to hatch the most!) and there was zero air cell. The entire egg was completely black. So I couldn't tell if it was moving or not. Is a disappearing air cell part of the pipping process? Should I intervene?

 

[Blue Raptor]

Me again! I have a lot going on with the duck eggs and chicken eggs, so I apologize for blowing up this site! My chick eggs have been hatching...One on Friday, one on Saturday, and one on Sunday. There are still two remaining eggs under her. No activity. I am not positive on the dates, but what I DO know, is that I marked them all on the 9th, when I decided to let her continue to sit and brood. I am racking my brain if it's possible that these 2 remaining eggs could have been laid ON the 9th and simply got marked a couple of hours later. Making today day 22, if that was the case. Yesterday, I candled the blue egg (The one I want to hatch the most!) and there was zero air cell. The entire egg was completely black. So I couldn't tell if it was moving or not. Is a disappearing air cell part of the pipping process? Should I intervene?

Quote:
I really hate the manufaturer's instructions. I wish they would just say, ask someone else, because they mess people up so bad. When you are just starting out with your first hatch, you have no idea why you are controlling humidity, what the importance of it is, and here's these 'instructions' throwing out a number or a how much to fill your water wells with as though that's the answer for everyone. These "instructions" don't take into consideration the myriad of factors that affect your humidty and the needs of the eggs. I swear, I'm going to write my own article on the importance of humidity.

Humidity is all about letting the proper amount of moisture leave the egg. This allows your air cells to grow. There is no "magic number". This is my philosophy. Pick a number from 30-50. Start your hatch at that percentage of humidity and then check your air cells for proper growth. If you candle, especially days 7 and 14 you can alter the humidity percentage in time to average out what your air cells need by lockdown at day 18 to increase the chances for your chicks to hatch properly.


By comparing your egg's air cells to one of the many egg charts you can be guided to what your eggs humidity needs are.
If your air cells are too small, this means that your humidity is too high and it is not letting the moisture leave the egg. This can cause chicks to drown at hatch time. If the air cell is too small you need to decrease the humidity so the egg will loose enough moisture and the air cells can grow.
If your air cells are growing too big, too fast, this means your humidity is too low and allowing too much moisture loss. This can cause the membrane to shrink wrap the chick suffocating it or keeping it from being able to move to pip and hatch. If the air cells are too big you need increase your humidity in order to slow/stop moisture loss and let your chicks developement stage catch up to the air cell growth.

It is my belief that if new hatchers monitored their air cells it would point them in the right direction to learning what humidity ranges work for them and their eggs.

 

[Sarjeanp]

I can't figure out how to delete this thread, so I will just update that I inspected both eggs, and they were dead. One of them was fully developed, with a moist membrane, but still had the ball of yolk in the egg with it.