Chick died 20 min after hatching

[Mill Chick]

@Debbie292d ? Might be able to help figure out? I find myself taking her a lot because she has had so much experience with hatching chicks!

 

[Melieke1985]

Do you have pictures of the chick? Some chicks are just not right inside where you can't see. But if there are external indications of things not being right, folks on here should be able to tell you.

No we buried it this morning. Didn’t take any pictures.

 

[FunClucks]

No we buried it this morning. Didn’t take any pictures.

Sorry for your loss. Sometimes, they're just not right inside, and there's nothing we can do. If this happens again, take some pictures and post them, and we may be able to help you get some idea of what went wrong.

This is the hard part of chicken keeping. Sending you supportive thoughts.

 

[Debbie292d]

1st time using an incubator.
My first chick hatched just fine and is doing good. But yesterday my second chick pipped at 2am and then rested an throughout the day you could hear him chirp and started to zip and break out of the egg at 10pm and that happend in less then 10 minutes. When he brook free off the egg there was some blood but for the rest he looked fine but wasn’t very active in trying to get up like the first chick. He was breathing fine and when I looked after 20 minutes it looked like he was gasping and then 10 minutes after that he was dead.
Could I have done something to prevent that or helped it?
I feel horrible because it looked like a perfect chick.

Thank you for the tag, @Mill Chick. Helping people get better at incubating is my love.

@Melieke1985, I'm very sorry! Once they hatch, there really isn't anything you can do, as they are very weak and need to rest. I do not know why this one died like that.

I stagger hatch 2-3 dozen silkie eggs which hatch every 4-5 days so that's dozens of baby chicks per week, and have never had one hatch itself and die. I've had a couple through the years I had to assist from shipped eggs and I was 50/50 on those, a couple made it, a couple didn't.

Thus, the only things I can think of it being are:

1: The parents may not be in top shape. It matters that they are healthy and eating nutritionally. Every chick, chicken, and duck here gets Kalmbach's Flock Maker. The hens get oyster shell in a dish separate from their feed. I am not saying your chickens aren't healthy though. I'm just letting you know what works for us and is a possible cause if they aren't healthy.

2: Your incubator may vary the temp too much. I would get a hygrometer/thermometer and check what your incubator says it's at. If you get a Govee on Amazon, most of those will track it on your phone for you so you can see any variances. Frequent small variations are normal.

They should be at 99.5 F/37.5 C the entire time of incubation. Humidity should be 40-50% until lockdown, then 65-70% for their last three days.

Don't give up! Try incubating again, soon, as you'll see it gets simpler and more successful as you go.

 

[Mark Park]

1st time using an incubator.
My first chick hatched just fine and is doing good. But yesterday my second chick pipped at 2am and then rested an throughout the day you could hear him chirp and started to zip and break out of the egg at 10pm and that happend in less then 10 minutes. When he brook free off the egg there was some blood but for the rest he looked fine but wasn’t very active in trying to get up like the first chick. He was breathing fine and when I looked after 20 minutes it looked like he was gasping and then 10 minutes after that he was dead.
Could I have done something to prevent that or helped it?
I feel horrible because it looked like a perfect chick.

Almost all chick deaths and deformities are the result of incorrect temperature and humidity.

This is because the "hobbyist" incubators are mostly crap. My recommendation would be to do one of four things:

1 -- Get a real incubator. You can get Chinese commercial incubators online. These will tend to have space for at least a couple of hundred eggs. They look like they are probably garbage, but they are not -- I used to import them from China to Europe for years and can tell you that they hold temperature within 0.1°C and humidity to within a couple of percent.

2 -- Find someone who has one of these and get him/her to hatch for you.

3 -- Get a broody hen. Buff Orpingtons make goid broodies.

4 -- Don't hatch eggs. There are several possible outcomes with the cheap novelty item incubators. The eggs just don't hatch at all. Or the chick can't break out. Or it manages to get out but its insides are stickingbout from its butt or one of its legs is attached sideways at a right angle to the other one and it dies if you don't kill it. Or you let a deformed chick grow and you put it in with your flock and it gets pecked to death. Or you let a vet lie to you and rip you off and then one of rhe above occurs.

In short, get the right equipment, get a broody, or don't hatch eggs. I don't mean to be harsh, but that is unfortunately how it is.

 

[Debbie292d]

Almost all chick deaths and deformities are the result of incorrect temperature and humidity.

This is because the "hobbyist" incubators are mostly crap. My recommendation would be to do one of four things:

1 -- Get a real incubator. You can get Chinese commercial incubators online. These will tend to have space for at least a couple of hundred eggs. They look like they are probably garbage, but they are not -- I used to import them from China to Europe for years and can tell you that they hold temperature within 0.1°C and humidity to within a couple of percent.

2 -- Find someone who has one of these and get him/her to hatch for you.

3 -- Get a broody hen. Buff Orpingtons make goid broodies.

4 -- Don't hatch eggs. There are several possible outcomes with the cheap novelty item incubators. The eggs just don't hatch at all. Or the chick can't break out. Or it manages to get out but its insides are stickingbout from its butt or one of its legs is attached sideways at a right angle to the other one and it dies if you don't kill it. Or you let a deformed chick grow and you put it in with your flock and it gets pecked to death. Or you let a vet lie to you and rip you off and then one of rhe above occurs.

In short, get the right equipment, get a broody, or don't hatch eggs. I don't mean to be harsh, but that is unfortunately how it is.

Prior to owning four incubators, I had silkies hatching eggs, and found they have a habit abandoning their chicks at 4-5 weeks to go back to being broody again.

I got tired of looking out in the yard to see four-week-old silkies free-ranging by themselves. That's not only dangerous, but they weren't getting food or water either because they weren't allowed in the coop anymore. They were fine when tagging behind mom, but now, on their own, forget it. They tried living in the coop and hid, but then, when they came out in the morning, they ran for the forest to hide. I couldn't let that happen again, so we built a growout pen for them. We now have four of those. If I have to raise my hens' chicks for them, I may as well hatch them myself, and I'll raise or sell them.

This is just my experience with letting silkies hatch their eggs, and I'll never do it again.