Button Quail Incubation - assisted out of shell - did I do the right thing??

[Sara L]

I am incubating 24 button quail eggs I received through the mail. I am using a homemade incubator made from a styrofoam cooler with a computer fan and two lights controlled with a water heater thermostat. I started incubation on 7/28/17 and hand turned the eggs in cartons (lifting one end up on a block) at least twice a day. Temperatures stayed between 97 and 100 F, mostly right around 99 F. 8/11/17 was day 14 so I water candled the eggs, 15 of them seemed to show movement (some more than others) and I couldn't see any movement on the remaining 9 (only 2 floated really high in the water). I placed all the eggs in lockdown since none of them smelled rotten. Humidity was in the 20s to 30s for most of incubation; I added warm water at time of lockdown and got the humidity up to the high 50s/low 60s. On day 16 8/13/17, no eggs had hatched. 8/14/17 AM there were 7 babies hatched and moving around the incubator. 8/14/17 PM after I got home from work there were another 3 babies hatched. None of the rest of the eggs seemed to be pipping and the babies seemed fluffy so I removed them to the brooder. I added warm water to bring the humidity back up since it dipped when I took the chicks out.

8/15/17 AM I noticed one egg looked like it might be pipping, but it was on the downward side of the egg so it was difficult to tell. 8/15/17 PM the egg was definitely zipping, but it didn't seem to be making much progress. No other eggs appeared to be pipping. 8/15/17 PM chick still zipping, but only about half of the circumference had been zipped. 8/16/17 AM no change with zipping chick and it was hard to tell if it was still alive and moving. Still no movement/change with other eggs. 8/16/17 PM I couldn't stand it anymore and took the egg out of the incubator. The membrane that was visible looked dry and yellow. The chick cheeped as I held it and I could see it breathing. I gently peeled some of the egg away where it had already zipped and it seemed to struggle more as I helped get rid of the shell. I was able to completely remove the shell and put the chick back into the incubator to warm up and fluff out. The chick is staying on its side and is kicking its legs like it thinks it is still in the egg and wants out.

Did I do the right thing to help it? Should I have helped it sooner? The blood vessels had completely absorbed, so I think it was ready to hatch but maybe got too tired or took too long and the membrane dried? Or maybe it was pipping when I took out the others and the dip in humidity (less than 5 min) made it dry out? Has anyone else had a similar experience? Will the chick live? The other 10 chicks in the brooder seem to be doing fine and are eating/drinking.

 

[JaeG]

I helped a Japanese quail hatch after it hadn't progressed much in 36 hours. After I helped it out of its egg, all afternoon it lay on its side twitching as if it were still unzipping, exactly like yours. It was still like that when I went to bed that night and I fully expected to wake up to a dead chick. But he was running round the incubator yelling his head off when I woke the next morning, looking for some friends.

All you can do, to the best of your knowledge and ability, is give them a chance. That's my philosophy anyway.

Let me know how the little chick goes. Fingers crossed!

 

[Sara L]

Thank you for sharing your story. I was really hopeful that the chick would make it, but unfortunately when I checked on the chick this morning it had passed. I think I should have intervened sooner. I will know better next time. The first 10 to hatch are still doing well, although two of them seem to have leg issues, I think they might have slid on the plastic lids I was using for the food.

 

[gpop1]

buttons do not have a lot of spare energy left after zipping so assisting any that have started zipping isn't a bad thing but you have to realize that you are responsible for any you assist.

Mother nature may have decided that it was better to let the chick die in the egg so by assisting you may end up with a chick that requires culling. (deformed etc)

If you plan to assist I suggest a container with a small amount of warm water dip your fingers in the water (damp not dripping wet) then pop the top of the egg. Next wipe the slime of the chicks and look for the way the wing folds. Gently wipe the wing to the side and the head should uncurl from under the wing. If the slime is still slimy return the chick to the incubator and let it finish pushing out of the egg on its own. Only if the slime has turned to a stiff plastic would I assist further by peeling the shell away then dipping my hand back in the water wetting the wrapping until the chick is released.

Any thing plastic in the brooder should be covered in shelf liner as buttons are terrible for leg problems. Also water dishes should be as shallow as possible or filled with small stones as buttons like to drown.

You can fix most leg problems with a shot glass (30 mins in 1hr out) or a cardboard shoe (small disk taped to bottom of the foot). Any that you can not fix with in the first week should be culled (the longer you wait the more attached you will become and the harder it is to do)

Also keep the brooder clean as they like to get poopy toe and that hard to clean.

 

[Erka97]

I see someone saying you should kill chicks with leg problems that can't be fixed, but I'd like to say I would not if they don't seem to be in pain. I've had a few with leg issues live good lives, though they were chickens and ducks instead.
The first was a chicken chick hatched in my class when I was in grade school. "Lucky" was born with one leg sticking out at a right angle at the "knee" joint. Her foot never touched the ground, and she could not use it at all. Despite this, she got around almost as well as the others, and she grew up to be an otherwise healthy hen. She lived a normal life for years with me -having the fewest chickens I got to take her home- until she was killed when an animal attacked the chicken coop.
I also had a duck whose toes died and had to be removed due to frostbite. It got around fairly well and lived a normal life for months like that, however it was the smallest duck we had and unfortunately it and a few others did not survive the week of -20 degree temperatures we had that year.
I've also seen many bird wheelchairs on the internet.
Being that quail are smaller, I would think they'd do better with bad legs, as leg issues seem to be worst for the largest of birds.
Also, splayed legs can be fixed by binding the legs together with something -I used twist ties for one of my chicks. Physical therapy helps too, have them walk and help them if they fall down.
Good luck with your little ones, and I hope their legs get better as they get older or you can fix them.

 

[Sara L]

I stopped the incubator today as none of the other eggs hatched or showed signs of hatching. I opened the remaining eggs; 1 wasn't fertilized, 1 died partway, and the rest looked fully developed. So, 11 hatched (1 assisted) and 10 still alive out of 24 eggs set. I think I must have had the humidity at the wrong percent during the incubation or lockdown, since the thermometer I use shows the highest/lowest temperatures for the last 12 hours and the temps were in range throughout incubation.
Of the 10 chicks still alive, they are doing well and starting to grow some feathers on their wings. Monday morning they will be 1 week old. I upgraded the brooder to a larger size and now have the shelf liner which seems to be working great. I used medical tape to bind the legs of the two which have splayed leg - how long should I keep the tape on? The yellow chick didn't have as bad splayed leg as the striped chick, and seemed to figure out how to move around with the taped legs faster. Both are eating and drinking, and the other chicks are not picking on them.
I tried the shotglass and the egg carton before I did the tape, and they both seemed to freak out the chicks more than help them. In both cases, the chick moved their legs out/up to squirm out and wouldn't stay standing with the leg in correct position. That is when I tried the tape and it took a few tries because they were hard to hold but I finally got the tape on the lower part of the leg.

 

[JaeG]

They are hard to hold when you need to tape legs! They are very busy babies. Often they only need 24 hours in hobbles to correct splayed legs so hopefully they've corrected and you can take them off.

We tried fixing one of ours but she always managed to wriggle free, no matter what we taped her legs with. As she got a bit older I could see it was an issue at the hip joint - one leg sticks straight out. But she lives inside and has just hatched her own chicks. Her leg makes it tricky but she's managing. She's being a very protective mother. One was late hatching - I'd put it in the incubator and it had hatched this morning. Once I could get it close enough to her she's adopted it just fine and it's pottering along with the other two chicks.

It's not unusual to have lower hatch rates with shipped eggs and humidity is important, the higher the better during lockdown. You should aim for at least 65% at that stage and it's the water surface area that increases the humidity. I like it higher as that gives you room to remove chicks that need it while not impacting the eggs still to hatch.

Enjoy your babies and there are lots of helpful people on the quail forum part of this site if you need to know what colours you have, or if you have any questions.

 

[Sara L]

I took the hobbles off this morning as that was roughly 24 hours on. The yellow chick originally wasn't as bad as the striped chick, and I think the hobbles made a huge difference. The yellow chick seems to be exactly the same as the others now, except the left foot seems turned out a bit more, and every once in a while it seems to push the bad leg out to the side again. The striped chick still has the leg sticking out a bit, but it seems to come and go, so I think it will be fine. The main thing for me is that they are actually walking and not pushing themselves along the floor. I am thinking they might end up named "Hop" and "Skip".

 

[JaeG]

Love the names! I'm currently hand rearing a finch chick (from hatching - its parents have proved to be terrible parents) and it has earned the name Pickle as it would throw itself around for food and more often than not end up stuck on its back, in a pickle. It's finally figured out which way is up and its eyes have just opened so it can see the food coming, so its a bit calmer now at meal times. I now call it Ickle Pickle.

What substrate have you got in your brooder? I've got shavings and straw in mine where the female is raising her chicks and I'd been worried about one chicks legs (not sure if, with the mother's disability, she managed to squash it a bit in a moment of panic - she's a bit of a nervous ninny) but it's racing around now with lovely strong, straight legs. It seems with Buttons the more rough the substrate the better to give their legs a good work out. They really are the cutest little things!

 

[Sara L]

I originally had paper towels, because that is what I used for the coturnix quail I hatched in June, and they didn't have any leg issues at all. And then the button quail developed leg issues and I learned on here that I shouldn't use paper towels. I switched to the kitchen shelf liner, its a kind of foamy/grippy grid so they should have lots of traction now. The best part is it is washable, so I can re-use it and I think it might even be able to go through the washing machine. I need to buy some more so I can have two sized to fit the brooder and so can swap them out and wash the dirty one rather than moving the chicks to a temporary brooder to wash the current mat.
For button quail, should I get some mates from a second source or can I breed these ones to each other? I don't want to create an inbred situation, but my family has always been distrustful of buying fully grown birds because you never know what kind of issues/diseases/parasites they might have so we have always raised our own birds from store-bought chicks or hatched them ourselves. I might have to hatch more button quail...lol... I think I might be a hatch-a-holic.