air cells

[hdowden]

ok humidity has been 35-45% but i have adnormal air cells and they are huge and only seem to get bigger no matter what i do. i dont want to loss any more chicks is there anything i can do?

 

[chicmom]

How long have your eggs incubated?

 

[hdowden]

today is day 10. i even have some that go down both sides of the eggs and some that take up almost have the egg

and i know thats not normal

edit: then i have those that are normal for this time in incubation

 

[hdowden]

anyone ever had this problem?

 

[Gypsy07]

Yes, with shipped eggs. It's usually an illusion! If the membrane has become detached from the shell at the edges of the air cell, when you candle it looks like the air cells are way bigger than they actually are. This is why I weigh all my eggs - I don't trust my own candling skills...

 

[hdowden]

Quote:
what do you use to weigh them and were can you get something to weigh them?

 

[Gypsy07]

Quote:
what do you use to weigh them and were can you get something to weigh them?

I use a basic cheap digital kitchen scale that weighs in grams. You don't need anything more precise than that. I bought mine in my local supermarket and it cost me about £10, but I imagine you could get something similar on eBay or Amazon very cheaply. Just search for digital kitchen scale.

Weighing really is the way to go - you can be certain your eggs are losing moisture at the correct rate and you don't need to worry and guess any more. And if by some stroke of bad luck you DO have a poor hatch, you'll know for certain it's not because your humidity was way off...

 

[hdowden]

all of them seem to be moving around nicly in their egg(s) at day 10 its gotting hard to see through to them but i can see them moving around

 

[hdowden]

Quote:
will this hurt the embryo?

 

[Gypsy07]

Quote:
will this hurt the embryo?

I'm not entirely sure. I think it depends in what sense you mean. I know shipped eggs have a lower hatch rate, but speaking personally, for me that usually manifests itself in a high percentage of complete non developers and then a small percentage of early deaths, say round about the 3-12 day mark. Any eggs that get as far as lockdown with a fully developed chick in them usually go on to have the same hatch rate as my own eggs that have made it to lockdown.

The last lot of shipped eggs I incubated, only 5 made it to lockdown. 4 hatched fine, and when I opened the last one to check, it was only a tiny embryo. I hadn't been sure on candling, so left it in just in case. So really, out of 4 viable embryos, all 4 hatched. My previous shipped egg incubation was exactly the same: 6 eggs made it to lockdown, 3 hatched out, adn the other 3 turned out to have been tiny early death embryos. So all 3 fully developed ones hatched out fine.

I think with shipped eggs, if you get them as far as lockdown, they have teh same chance of hatching out as any other egg. The problems with them tend to come early on in the incubation. I hope that info is helpful for you...