Any hope for the anxious novice?

[Peskypigeon]

Hello Everybirdie,
I have been in love with King/button quails forever. Finally, I buckled this fall and bought two batches from separate folks. I know where I went wrong, but please tell me if I have hope so I can prepare.

i bought one batch of21 off eBay, and one batch of 9 from a farmer I follow on Instagram. Well, as luck would have it, they arrived exactly a week apart from each other. The farmer’s on the 4th, the eBays on the 10th.
My first error was the incubator. I just wanted something simple and small, but trusted a model that was known for being a fluke. Those stupid... 7 egg ones that are two wet and fluctuate. Well, I quickly returned and replaced them with a better model that could fit all my eggs anyway, and an automatic turner. But the 9 batch had been incubating in the bad incubator for 7 days already. The 21 batch, only about two days.

Otherwise I have done my utmost to keep them secure and taken care of them. On day 12, I floated the 9 batch. All floated, but some more than others and I hear that’s no good.

It is now day 15 and I am TERRIFIED none of them will hatch, and that they were too humid too early on due to my blunder of not checking reviews and they died.
In addition, I am worried that due to being a week apart and sharing an incubator, the 21 batch will get to humid and perish as well.

Did I ruin 30 quail eggs?

 

[Stino12]

TBH my egg experiment spent almost all of the 21 days at 60% humidity and then 70% on the last couple of days because I couldn't get the flipping thing to come down to a normal humidity because it was poopy and I hate it. Annywayyy all my eggs hatched is what I'm getting at. So candle the eggs and see what's happening in them

 

[Peskypigeon]

that does make me feel a bit better, thank you. I try to remind myself “button quails aren’t very good mothers!”

i did try to candle them on the 12th day as well- But I only did two. I believe one was infertile, but I still left him in there because he floated (just in case I was seeing wrong). The other was two dark a shell (or he was big in the egg?) but I didn’t try very hard before reverting to the floating test. Though I can’t candle them now in lockdown...! So I suppose I’ll just stomach it and wait for this hatching period. Maybe day 18 if there’s no hatching..? As long as it wouldn’t harm them.

 

[Peskypigeon]

Update: okay, upon candling, it seems that unfortunately only two of the nine and maybe 16 of the 21 have hope. I really hope at least one from the moderately-boiled hatch makes it... some of the 16 really show good signs on day ten, so I’m rooting for them. Though the prettiest colored ones don’t seem to be lucky. At least I get a pretty eggshell to keep?

 

[Stino12]

Fingers crossed!

 

[JaeG]

Don't rely on the float test - it's a highly inaccurate way of testing eggs. Many people have thought their eggs were dead after floating them, only to do an eggtopsy and find the chick was actually alive, but once you open that egg it cannot survive.

I incubated my own quail eggs, Kings and Coturnix, at a high humidity (I'm talking 70-80%) the whole way through incubation (my climate is very humid). From memory I only lost the very odd one. Shipped eggs are more difficult to hatch as the journey they have had to you dictates how successful you'll be.

 

[Peskypigeon]

Does anybirdie know if I should expect them to be early or late if they do hatch? I’ll give them until Thursday (24th) to hatch before I give up and remove them so the second batch can begin lockdown, but with high humidity would it be a late hatch?

 

[JaeG]

Does anybirdie know if I should expect them to be early or late if they do hatch? I’ll give them until Thursday (24th) to hatch before I give up and remove them so the second batch can begin lockdown, but with high humidity would it be a late hatch?

It's the temperature that dictates when they will hatch. I had a few hens incubate naturally and if it was early spring or late autumn, with cooler nights, the eggs took up to 21 days to hatch.

What day are your eggs on? As long as you keep them in the same position they are sitting in inside the incubator you can still candle during lockdown to check what's happening with the air cells, if they are drawing down on one side, and to see if any eggs have internally pipped. It's only once there are external pips that you should keep the incubator closed.

 

[Peskypigeon]

Okay, good to know. I know the first incubator tried to cook them, hence so many didn’t make it even if they would have developed. Today is day 16. The 24th would be day 19 for them, but we only had one brief temperature dip. It’s been hot here otherwise and this incubator keeps it fairly stable aside from being still air and me having to wrap blankets around to keep half of it from getting too cold (the 16 batch was on that side but still developed well it seems).
I don’t think anybirdie has externally pipped, but I think I kept the Too Dark To See Inside egg in there as well just in case. It did feel heavy, but maybe it was just my imagination.

 

[Peskypigeon]

Update: neither have externally pipped, so I checked them quickly. The dark one worries me simply because I absolutely cannot tell if I see a mass inside of it or not. The lighter one clearly has a mass, but it looks more like the 16 batch does right now... (day 11). I don’t think that’s any good.

is there any point? Or should I simply leave them just for shits and giggles?