Bad hatch, 2 dead, help me know what happened.

[FunClucks]

No they were from a friend. She had just had a great hatch rate of 11/12 a bit ago. Although, when I candled 4 of them weren’t even developed.

Many of us, when we talk about hatch rate, remove any unfertile eggs from our calculations. We remove "clears" after the first week, and then say X/Y eggs hatched. So if you set 12 eggs and 4 of them turn up clears (unfertile - no development by day 7), and you hatch 4 chicks and 2 survive, you would say you had 4/8 hatch and 2/8 survived. So you have a 50% hatch rate, which isn't horrid, and a 25% survival rate, which isn't great. I, too, am questioning your incubator.

Clears, or unfertile eggs are either too old (as previous poster says) or were never fertilized, or damaged in shipping (not the case for you), so when you look at the success of the hatch, those are very different reasons than when something goes wrong as the chick is developing or hatching.

FYI, my favorite incubator is the Nurture Right 360. Great price point for the many features, and it's almost set it and forget it. Other folks have other favorites.

 

[New duck mommy 2021]

Even those of us who hatch very often and have great success can loose babies
Moms loose them too
The egg will be stinky during hatch so I’m not thinking infection
That one you did help to soon as it still has yolk to absorb
Many babies make the external and it then takes 24-48 hours to fully zip
I just had a few do a half zip and then nothing for a good 12 hours then they finished and zipped out
Often we help to much ti soon and sometimes they can still survive and sometimes they don’t
I have had to learn patients while hatching ducklings
I helped to much on my first hatch and lost the first one
Now I’m very patient and I don’t open them up even with assists I keep the safety hole small that way they get air but I’m not wetting membrane constantly
I have found this much better
Don’t be hard on yourself
We can only learn from experience and asking questions
Cuddle the ones you did get and enjoy every moment as they grow so fast

 

[Kiki]

View attachment 3509630
This is hard for me to post because it might be fault. I’m going to be honest even though it’s kind of killing me. I’m new to this. This hatch has been horrible. The first egg hatch but then started blowing bubbles. I looked online and it said it was drowning so I opened it a bit more around the beak. She unzipped and is doing great. The next one did great by itself. The 3rd one pipped and barely started to unzip. Very lethargic. It died in the shell. The next one pipped and made a hole and was chirping, but didn’t do any thing for many hours, so I chipped a little around the beak. It was alive, but had not done anything at all for over 24 hours. It was at about 27 hours so I helped it out and this is what I found. Looks like unabsorbed yolk and its navel was bleeding. It had a foul odor so I’m thinking bacteria? I saved one’s life by helping it and I want to know if this little guys death was my fault so I can learn. My incubator was brand new. And it is the worst. I’m sending it back. Nothing worked right. I got it based off of a website’s recommendation, but missed the reviews I guess. It is a horrible incubator and has killed many chicks.

Unfortunately, you cannot trust the incubators built-in reading for temperature or humidity.
No matter what incubator you purchase next you must buy and calibrate a thermometer or two and salt test is separately purchased humidity gauge.

Knowing, for sure, what your temperature and humidity is at at all times can help prevent issues like this.

 

[I Love Feather Babies]

Many of us, when we talk about hatch rate, remove any unfertile eggs from our calculations. We remove "clears" after the first week, and then say X/Y eggs hatched. So if you set 12 eggs and 4 of them turn up clears (unfertile - no development by day 7), and you hatch 4 chicks and 2 survive, you would say you had 4/8 hatch and 2/8 survived. So you have a 50% hatch rate, which isn't horrid, and a 25% survival rate, which isn't great. I, too, am questioning your incubator.

Clears, or unfertile eggs are either too old (as previous poster says) or were never fertilized, or damaged in shipping (not the case for you), so when you look at the success of the hatch, those are very different reasons than when something goes wrong as the chick is developing or hatching.

FYI, my favorite incubator is the Nurture Right 360. Great price point for the many features, and it's almost set it and forget it. Other folks have other favorites.

I got a Nurture Right 360 for Mother’s Day. I did a lot of research on brands and looked t a lot of reviews and found the nurture right to be the best for the money. Had a lot of great reviews. I set 22 on Mother’s Day. After candling at the end of week one I could tell 2 were not fertile. I had some very dark brown eggs so could not tell on those. Of the 20 left, 14 hatched and lost one of those. I did not open unhatched eggs to see if they were fertile and just didn’t make it. I have 13 beautiful babies. This was my first time to try hatching and was very nervous about it, but I think for my first time it went very well.