Calculating an "honest" hatch rate?

[Ruditchka]

Hi, of course everyone would prefer to brag about hatch rate numbers, as would I(!), but I'm not the type to inflate these numbers as all of you know, many people do! Whether they play golf and take a "Mulligan"(free shot that doesn't count toward your "real" score), don't count that few minutes they are late, and consider it "on-time", or just plain ole' cheat or lie to impress..., whatever the case may be, I'm just trying to get a "standard" on how to consider/calculate a "TRUE" hatch rate! I'm on day 12 and originally had 30 eggs in the bator(15 shipped/15 local p-up) During candeling up to this day, I removed 15 eggs of which 14 had not even begun to grow(all cracked open w/no visible veining or dark-spots, just looked like "store eggs") and one that had a few tiny veins and little dark spot "heart" attached near air cell that must've died the first few days. The other 15 were all moving and developing at some point in the last few days and hopefully still are! Anyway, I know I have to count the 15 and feel I should count the one that had started but died early. Here comes the real question though: Do I count the 14 with no growth whatsoever, being that they may have been fertile but may have not started growing due hot-spots or other unknowns during the beginning of incubation, or should they not be factored in to the hatch rate at all??? I'm not a cheater(or liar), and my conscience would feel better knowing my accurate hatch-rate, out of the total 30, whether it already be in an area at 50%, or in the current growth out of the 16 eggs(which were definately fertile or undamaged during shipping), in the 90 plus percentile(they may not continue to all survive the next 9 days though and percentage may ultimately drop). How do others figure their rate honestly? Any input would be helpful...., Thanks All!

 

[vfem]

I don't know how to even calculate a true hatch rate. Mine never go well so I don't worry about it. I always wondered if none-fertile eggs should count though. If you have 50 eggs... 25 none-fertile... why should the 25 none count?! You know they never had a chance. Don't you just count the one's that 'had' a chance to even hatch?

I just want happy healthy chicks.... if they all could hatch now that would be the best!!!

 

[4-H chicken mom]

I would not count the eggs that never even began to develope in your hatch rate success. Only those that began to develope should be counted. But that's MO.

 

[old mill poultry]

Your hatch rate is the number of fertile of eggs(no clears) and what you have successfully hatch of healthy live chicks. Your fertility rate is the percentage of all eggs found fertile.

 

[patandchickens]

There's sort of two questions here. One is the conventional definitions of terms among chicken people. I'll leave that alone

The other is what your POINT is in calculating <whatever>. It seems to me that there are legitimate honest grounds for doing it several different ways depending on what your interest is.

If you want to know, or represent, the overall success rate of setting eggs -- which you might want to tell someone buying eggs from you, or use the info to decide how many eggs/settings you'll need if you want X number of chicks this year -- then it's the number of live chicks divided by the number of eggs initially set.

If OTOH you want to know your incubation success -- if you want to know how well your incubator is doing, for instance -- then infertiles are kind of irrelevant to the question, and you'd want the number of live chicks divided by the number of NON-CLEARS (based on candling towards the end of the first week).

Or if you want to know the crude fertility rate of your flock, i.e. the fraction of eggs that at least begin development, then you would want the number of early non-clears divided by the total number of eggs initially set (or, more directly, the % of non-set eggs that appear fertile when broken open)

There are reasons to care about any or all of the three, they are all equally honest, they just tell you different things, you know?

JMO,

Pat, currently depressed about a first hatch that had 20 clears, 1 blood ring, 2 quitters, 1 live chick yay!, and 3 other full-term that I now doubt are going to hatch although I'll give them another couple days

 

[Ruditchka]

Quote:
I'm just not sure if some of the 14 may have been fertile and just never took to growing? They sure didn't appear so, especially after day 8, 9, and 12 that I removed them, but really don't know how to tell between the store egg and fertile egg before development. Thanks for all your responses to my personal dilema here!!

 

[vfem]

If you crack clear eggs you should see the bullseye spot on the yolk that says whether it was fertile or not. I do crack mine open to see if they don't develop... and if they do and die I still crack them open to see why.

They only reason I do that, is on my birds' own eggs... I want to know the fertility rate rather then the hatch rate on my own birds for when I sell the eggs or decide to hatch my own.

I think that would be the only reason to really know... and I guess fertility would be more important then the hatch rate?!

 

[Ruditchka]

Quote:
Hi Pat,
Personally, I'd be more comfortable using the most difficult of hatch-rate calculations and not in terms of what your above quote refers to!

I'd rather have a low percentile and know it is a true rate amongst hard-core chicken hatchers! Not like, for example, you go to the bowling alley, take a few practice bowls, then on your first "real" frame, get a gutter ball, but then decide, well, I'll "really" start the game "now" and start anew! You can bowl a perfect 300 game now, but to me, that's just a form of "cheating yourself" and in reality an imperfect game is what I had bowled! I'm only hatching because I think its truly amazing(and so will my 8yr old daughter) and these chickens are to be our pet flock, where, as she says, I can be the father and her the mother....! I guess, in that case, since I really don't know if the 14 eggs were truly fertile, I'll count all 30 and calculate from there! I don't really care what the number is, just was curious to rate myself and homemade bator in this endeavor. I'll be happy to hatch only 2, if that's what I end up with, just so long as the chick has a playmate!

 

[Marion]

Quote:
Great discussion, I agree with you 100%.

 

[Ruditchka]

I guess the most "correct" way I can calculate my rate(if all the remaining 15 do hatch!) would be to say that I had a 50% hatch rate "but" it appeared that 14 of the original 30 didn't start to develop and one had died at an early stage! That covers all bases and will let any other individual see/calculate it as they will, if their methods are different! If everyone posted their own hatch rates in these terms, it would be nice because others can see how other peoples rates were comparable. It would be a standard that all could rely on, instead of having unseen incosistencies when personal hatch rate calculations are posted w/out their formulations known or posted also.