I realize I'm late to this thread, I've been lurking for a while and I'm on day 41 with two eggs today. I've had some very helpful offline conversations with Shelby (thank you again!) but I figured I'd post some of my news here in case it's helpful for others (and incase others can help me!!).
Short synopsis:
Two eggs from the same hen, they were laid a couple miles from my house (no shipping). According to some advice I read here I started them dry but when they
each lost
4 times what they were supposed to lose in the
first day I knew something was awry. I immediately added water and brought the humidity up to about 25%. They continued to lose too much but loss slowed to about 3g per day (goal was 1.7g per day). Fast forward to day 25ish, by this time I had increased humidity to ~55-65% in desperation because they had a lot of tape on them and were still losing too much! I just checked and one of the eggs lost the "correct amount" of weight only 7 of the last 41 days! Anyway, day 30, both still underweight, at this point I was basically panicking and decided that it was safer to increase humidity way beyond the suggested range, than it was to tape over almost the entire shell. I was worried about suffocating them with tape! So, humidity was up to 72% for a little bit, and that was the only time during the entire incubation that they both consistently lost an "appropriate" weight. However, during those few days I had some conversations with Shelby who said to reduce humidity, turn off the fan, and cover them with tape. No fan is not an option because my incubator temp plummeted and I couldn't keep it in range, so the I reduced the fan by 80% and made it run intermittently (it's only on for the moments that the lights are on (for temp regulation)). Temp stabilized and I slowly brought humidity down to 40-45%.
Day 33 I saw one wiggle! The egg that had been losing the most weight (GG) wiggled on day 33 and the other egg (MB) started wiggling on day ~35. Day 37 was the last time I saw GG wiggle. I'm very sad about it. Day 39 I was able to hear a heartbeat and hear "thumping" when MB wiggles, but GG sounds silent. I've not given up all hope but I'm 98% sure GG is dead. MB is quite wiggly these days and responds to voice or whistles or just wiggles for the heck of it.
I'm pretty torn up about GG, but for now I'm treating it the same and still turning and talking and listening.
On Shelby's advice both eggs are 95%+ covered in tape, humidity is stable at about 40-45% and temp has been pretty stable the entire time (97˚F). They are both still losing more than they should and I am quite worried I will lose MB too.
Here's a chart of their progress as of last night's weigh-in:
View attachment 1280330
You can see both are dangerously underweight. The "Probably dead" line is 20% loss.
Interestingly if I ignore the first day loss of 6/7g then that brings my actual weight (the blue line)
much closer to the target window (at least for MB).
Anyway, I fear that one is dead and I'm terrified that I'm going to kill the other one. I feel like I'm in the home stretch but knowing that they could easily die at any moment is terrible! I'm worried about too much tape, I'm worried about too much weight loss (still).
I welcome any advice or input that anyone might have!
Thank you!
-Logan
