Breeched chick?

[MaybeChickenMama]

I had my first hatch yesterday. The first baby was a disaster, we had to cull him. I’ve mentioned this in my other thread.

10 of my 11 hatched, the first one didn’t make it. I have 9 healthy chicks. I checked the one remaining egg that hadn’t pipped, he was alive last night. This morning there was no movement, no tapping no anything. I was going to leave him just incase, but I’m going to be honest....that incubator smelled sooooooo bad. The first fella hatched at warp speed and his yolk had busted at some point during hatch. The bottom of the bator was full of it. Anyway, so I put a teeny hole in the egg once I was pretty confident the chick was dead. Sure enough...he was dead. But here’s my question...

He’d absorbed his yolk, head tucked under wing, all that was okay. But his legs and little butt were against the air sac, so he was upside down. I’m assuming this is breeched? I feel like I should have helped him, but after that first horrendous baby had hatched (completely unassisted) I didn’t want to risk helping a baby that probably shouldn’t have hatched. My thinking was if he wasn’t able to make that first initial pip then...you know..maybe he just wasn’t strong enough and would suffer and die if I assisted.

Was I wrong to not help him? Of course I didn’t know he was breeched until his eggtopsy today....And for future reference is there anyway you can tell via candling that they are breeched?

 

[Artichoke Lover]

I don’t think you did anything wrong. There are almost always a 1 or 2 that just don’t pip and hatch. Being breach alone isn’t a death sentence. Most of my first hatch were malpositioned for unknown reasons and only 3 out of over 30 failed to pip and I think at least one had died earlier in the week. It would be hard if not impossible to tell by candling (at least in my experience) as they don’t start moving into hatch position until lockdown and you don’t want to candle during lockdown.