I was picking up some chicks tonight (When am I not?) and the person I was picking them up from said he has never had a serama egg hatch out of 8 different batches. Now I am worried because I have 12 coming in. Is there any secret to hatching them? I have a Hovabator, and a Brinsea Advanced 20 with Humidity Pump. Are they so sensitive that they have to have the Brinsea (I have call duck eggs that I am working on in there right now). Do they need higher temps, more humidity? (Have heard these things before). Same as other chicks? HELP I might be stressing over nothing, but really dont' want another dud hatch.
I hatched 2 out of a still air little giant and I have 7 more in the still air hova due in less than a week. 7 out of 8 of my shipped eggs are still alive after 2 weeks. The problem is not the incubating and hatching. The problems seem to come from the breeders first and shipping damage second. I ordered 4 batches of serama eggs. 3 off ebay sellers and 1 off eggbid. I got 1 completely dud batch. Of the 2 that weren't scrambled in shipping they were both infertile. I got 2 so/so batches. Half to 2/3rds did not develop at all, most of those were infertile, or died within days of setting. I got one darn near perfect batch. Shipped from Texas to Iowa all 8 developped and 6 made it to hatching time but due to a humidity problem (I'd never hatched out of that bator only my hova) only 2 made it out. These last 8 I got are from the same person and again every egg did something and there are 7 left this time. Many of the breeders selling eggs online don't seem to test their eggs properly. They don't really know if their eggs are coming out fertile, they ship pullet eggs, etc... There are certain problems to mixing the sizes of seramas and especially if you were to cross a large roo with a smaller hen. I don't know it all yet since I only have 2 little half feathered chicks but I have seen that the seller and their birds make a huge difference in success or failure of hatching serama eggs. The 2nd greatest impact seems to be shipping damage. Every single serama egg I've had shipped to me no matter how packaged has arrived with a loose or scrambled air sac and various random bubbles. Now this could also be partially the seller's fault since fresher eggs having smaller air sacs seem to suffer less damage in that regard. While eggs with damaged air sacs can hatch the odds are lowered some. On top of those 2 problems is that serama do potentially carry a version of a lethal gene. However this would effect no more than 25% of them and would kill them shortly before hatch. I'm told not all serama lines have the gene and that it is "diluted" so that if it exists it kills less than 25%. I'm not sure exactly what people mean when they say diluted since it's probably a very simplified way of describing something much more complicated. If you get serama eggs from a good seller who knows their eggs are fertile and knows some basics of crossing the various sizes or has only narrow size range then really they are not much harder incubate than any other chicken egg. The only thing I decided to do different is keep the humidity slightly higher since it seems to me the smaller eggs tend toward too much moisture loss. I do the same with my quail eggs.
