analyzing the broody hen hatch.

[monicas]

the stats
Day 1
9 blrw shipped eggs
5 mille fleur.

day 7 : 5 blrw and 5 mf showing signs of growth.
day 11 or 12 one mf egg was found on the ground outside the nest in the am. Out all night? put it back in the nest marked L shorthand for " if this thing hatches it will hatch late."
day 14 :4 blr and 5 mf. Discarded the not developing eggs. All looked fresh when broken with intact yolks.
Day 20 one healthy MF chick
Day 21 one wet dead mf chick fully out of egg 4 blrw healthy chicks

day 22 removed additonal 3 eggs including L from nest and into incubator
candling shows chicks in two and blood vessels and partially grown chick in L egg

Day 24 candling appears to show beak in airsac for one egg. L egg appears fully formed.
Day 25. Opened all remaining eggs for autoposy. two perfectly formed (to my inexpert view) dead mf chicks. One with beak in airsac. L egg appears dead until I get about a half inch of shell off the airsac and see movement.
eek! find a shell the same size and cap egg. immediately back into incubator

day 27 no change
day 28 strong peeping.
Day 29 weak peeping and once I remove the egg shell cap, decreasing ineffectual struggles. After careful thought (not enough carbon dioxide to stimulate hatch due to compromised egg shell? ), 8 hours of one tiny bit of shell at a time assisted hatch with sucessful results. welling of blood in egg lining but no drips, fully absorbed yolk sac, especially thick membrane. weak looking but active chick.
day 32 is strong, loud, and able to hold own with larger chicks.

questions: poor hatch rate 2 of 5 fully formed chicks for mf. best guesses at causes for late death or lack of pipping? What is a normal rate of successful pipping/hatch of bantams?

assisted hatch: I assume that no matter how attractive this chick is, it should be culled from breeding. I have one other batch of eggs from this hen/roo combo. the roo was lost in a hawk attack last week. if we have low hatch on the remaining eggs, when would you decide the viability of the chicks are suspect and not breed any of the chicks from this breeding?

 

[Revelle]

Wow! If you're talking about culling the L chick, I wouldn't. Chick has to be wanting to live in the extreme if it survived all that! Unless it is behind and shows bad traits.

 

[monicas]

I'm totally impressed by his ability to survive. He's in a brooder with 2 larger chicks (all I had) and is running around like a a mad chicken. He seems normal except... Boy, that chick is LOUD.
He can cheep twice as loud as the others.

 

[ilovechickens]

He or she is a fighter, I would not have the heart to cull it, I would make it its own little house and let it live there with a mate until it died of natural deathe

 

[Ridgerunner]

I remember reading something on incubating, I think on the University of Virginia site but could be a link from that site, that said early or late hatching is an inherited trait. They recommend that commercial operations not let late hatchers breed if you are after hatching eggs. I have not seen that anywhere else.

I would hesitate to let the late hatcher breed. It may have had hatching delayed due to being out of the nest and cooling off, or it may be due to something else.

BTW, to cull does not mean to kill. When you cull something you select it based on certain criteria. From the way Monicas phrased it, I assumed the selection was to not go in a breeding program. I did not automatically take it to mean to kill. It could easily go into a laying flock or be a pet, just not allow it to have offspring.

 

[monicas]

Correct. Cull for me means, don't breed. That may make him soup eventually but I won't bash him on the head or anything. I simply won't use him for breeding as I don't know if his difficulty hatching was due to the chilling or some genetic issue. That probably means I give him away to someone for their non breeding flock.