This has been such a neat experience and fun sharing with all of you. I'm going to watch the May hatching thread and hope I can join it if I can get my Welsummer eggs. I'm crossing my fingers!!
As for my official stats, I started with 42 eggs. 5 I knew right off the bat were almost certainly not fertile because of the hen they were from but I wanted to try anyway. Other random ones also were culled right away, 4 were not fertile, 1 was a blood ring loss and 1 was a very early quitter.
31 eggs made it to lockdown. Of those I had marked 5 during my last candling as possibly dead but I wasn't sure so I left them in.
23 of the 31 hatched. 1 has some serious problems with her butt/stomach and her legs & feet. She does not appear ill but I have no idea how to help so it might die. 2 others have some minor issues with their butts that I hope will resolve. They are all hanging out in the incubator for now. The other healthy 20 are having a party in the barn in their brooder!
The 8 eggs that did not hatch really bummed me out. Remember the 5 that I had marked questionable at lockdown? Well 3 of them ending up hatching but 2 did not. Goes to show my candling skills are not very good yet! 6 of these 8 were very far along, including the cracked egg that I had waxed and hand turned all this time. I did an eggtopsy and the best I can figure from my research is that the heat spike I had right before lockdown probably killed them. I feel really bad about that. The night I went to bed and woke up to the incubator being 102 was unexplainable, and I don't know how long they were that high. Then later the next day they spiked back to 102 again!
I think that really did it and caused these to die because of their positioning and most likely date of death.
The other 2 were not as far along and were positioned differently so I think they had died a few days before that. Those were the ones I had marked questionable! So I did candle them correctly and guessed correctly on their deaths. I don't know why those 2 died.
Overall not too bad for my first time. Definitely learned some important things. My death rate was about 25% though which is way too high and will have to be improved!
Three speckled sussex and three I got that are unknown. They are supposed to be bantum , two are small one is big. lol I don't know what they are but they are cute. I will post pictures later. I am too tied to read all the posts but congrat to all the new chicks.
