- Jul 26, 2009
- 1,866
- 41
- 171
Like I said in a previous post, these eggs really bother me because they're just so small and fragile. I just stuck them in the Brinsea last Friday 06/18 and have left them alone for the most part. I do check it a couple times a day just to make sure everything is ok, temp good, humidity pump tubing straight and resevoir has adequate water, that sort of thing.
Today, I decided to open it and check, and was greeted by a faint but unmistakable foul odor. I knew this was a bad sign, but I had to wait until after dark to candle them and see what was what. I don't have a "dark" room in my house to candle in during daylight hours except for my overcrowded utility room with no windows, and I'm not risking dropping them in there with no table to sit at and work over a padded surface.
I found that the bad smell was coming from a rotten one that had ruptured at the bottom and oozed -- at least they're very small, so there wasnt'a big mess. Nothing went through the foam liner to the bottom -- it did have a small bit of "glop" stuck to the foam, so I just cut out around it and discarded, then put a a couple of drops of Brinsea's egg and incubator disinfectant solution on the foam to sterilize. I also made sure to bleach my hands before touching any more eggs.
Upon candling, I found 5 more that were defiitely bad -- I could see things slosing around in there. I cracked each of those, and was rewarded with a rotten stench from each (yuck!) - - definitely all bad. As a side note, I have to say that, in order to candle them, I had to cover the disc of the LED light I have been using with aluminum foil with just a tiny hole punched out -- otherwise, the light was so big it washed light around the egg, rather than through it (if that makes sense), making it too hard to see inside.
So, counting the one I broke day 1 trying to repair a little dent with candle wax, that leaves me with 18 that I am pretty sure are OK and alive at this point. A couple of them had such dark shells it was a little hard to tell, but I was confindent enough in their appearance to put them back in. On some of them, I saw definite embryo movement.
So, at roughly the halfway point, that is the status of this project. I have been running the incubator at 99.8 rather than 99.6, since some sources indicate that quail eggs should be just a bit warmer than larger eggs like chickens -- I figure that 0.2 degrees isn't enough to cause a big problem either way (hope I'm right).
Since Button Quail seem to take anywhere from 16 to 18 days to hatch, I am planning to do the "lockdown" next saturday, which would be day 15 -- I'll take the Brinsea off the autoturner and up the humidity to 68% (I've read various sources that say 65 to 70 percent is ideal, so I'm going to split the difference on this as well).
Thanks for reading this -- I know it's long.
Today, I decided to open it and check, and was greeted by a faint but unmistakable foul odor. I knew this was a bad sign, but I had to wait until after dark to candle them and see what was what. I don't have a "dark" room in my house to candle in during daylight hours except for my overcrowded utility room with no windows, and I'm not risking dropping them in there with no table to sit at and work over a padded surface.
I found that the bad smell was coming from a rotten one that had ruptured at the bottom and oozed -- at least they're very small, so there wasnt'a big mess. Nothing went through the foam liner to the bottom -- it did have a small bit of "glop" stuck to the foam, so I just cut out around it and discarded, then put a a couple of drops of Brinsea's egg and incubator disinfectant solution on the foam to sterilize. I also made sure to bleach my hands before touching any more eggs.
Upon candling, I found 5 more that were defiitely bad -- I could see things slosing around in there. I cracked each of those, and was rewarded with a rotten stench from each (yuck!) - - definitely all bad. As a side note, I have to say that, in order to candle them, I had to cover the disc of the LED light I have been using with aluminum foil with just a tiny hole punched out -- otherwise, the light was so big it washed light around the egg, rather than through it (if that makes sense), making it too hard to see inside.
So, counting the one I broke day 1 trying to repair a little dent with candle wax, that leaves me with 18 that I am pretty sure are OK and alive at this point. A couple of them had such dark shells it was a little hard to tell, but I was confindent enough in their appearance to put them back in. On some of them, I saw definite embryo movement.
So, at roughly the halfway point, that is the status of this project. I have been running the incubator at 99.8 rather than 99.6, since some sources indicate that quail eggs should be just a bit warmer than larger eggs like chickens -- I figure that 0.2 degrees isn't enough to cause a big problem either way (hope I'm right).
Since Button Quail seem to take anywhere from 16 to 18 days to hatch, I am planning to do the "lockdown" next saturday, which would be day 15 -- I'll take the Brinsea off the autoturner and up the humidity to 68% (I've read various sources that say 65 to 70 percent is ideal, so I'm going to split the difference on this as well).
Thanks for reading this -- I know it's long.
