Bad hatch rate on my first set. 1 out of 30, What should I do differently!

[Rykayla22]

I did my first hatch. I had a very bad hatch rate. I managed to get atleast one chick out of 30. This past Sunday was lockdown. I have a hovabator 1583. I had my incubator In our spare room ( draft free ) The temperature stayed at 37.5-38 degrees with a humidity of 35-40. I candeled all of my eggs before lockdown and all seemed fine! My first and only chick hatched Monday night! Come Tuesday l closed the bedroom door because our cats were curious about the first chick and I didn’t want anything to happen! The next morning I went to check on everything and the temperature was at 37 degrees! I am not sure if it went lower then this or not! Come Wednesday I finally removed the other chick. And today I candeled my eggs no chirping no movement and still no hatching I cracked open almost all of my eggs except for 5. They all looked like this poor little one What do you think went wrong?

 

[Rooster G]

Looks like low temps to me.

 

[Uff Da]

Did you check your incubator's temps with a separate calibrated thermometer, or just go off of the one that came in the incubator? They are rarely ever accurate. You must always use a separate, calibrated thermometer. There arw a lot of resources on this site about where to find and how to calibrate thermometers.

 

[Rykayla22]

I had two thermometers in the incubator. I had one glass thermometer and one combo digital thermometer/hydrometer in the incubator. Should I buy another combo one and have them on both sides of the incubator for my next set?

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

All that liquid at hatch means your humidity was a lot higher than you think.

 

[Uff Da]

I had two thermometers in the incubator. I had one glass thermometer and one combo digital thermometer/hydrometer in the incubator. Should I buy another combo one and have them on both sides of the incubator for my next set?

Were they calibrated?

 

[Rooster G]

Maybe your thermometers are fine but you had some wild temp swings. The 1583 is a good incubator. Did the fan work the whole time? Did the external temps change drastically? Did a child turn the wafer?

Another thing to look at is how the eggs were stored and at what temperature.

Make a couple changes and start another round.