Chicks Died in Egg

[LeaB]

Hello, I just hatched my first group of chicks. Brand new Hovabator 2370 electronic circulated incubator air with IncuTurn egg turner.

I set 42 eggs and have 23 chicks. 2 chicks partially zipped then died. 10 eggs appear to have nearly or fully-formed chicks in them. (I waited until Day 25 to check and none of them were pipped.)

I expected a few losses but that seemed like a high-percentage, especially since the chicks were nearly ready to hatch. I never saw any temperature fluctuations and there were no power outages. I added water for humidity as directed and kept the incubator closed. I locked down on day 19. I did think there was plenty of jostling of the eggs as the chicks hatched and wondered if that was the problem? I removed the oldest chicks when there were 4-6 in the incubator.

I'd like to set a second group but really hope to have a better hatch rate. What should I do differently?

Thanks,
Lea

 

[Susan Skylark]

Were these shipped eggs? I had 50% die in shell on my last shipped batch, other possibilities are anything that stresses eggs preincubation or in the first few days of development: cold or heat exposure, incubator heat spikes, 10 days or older when set, shipping…when the bird is only a couple of cells, any damage to the dna of one cell suddenly becomes significant as that cell will soon copy itself to become a grandfather to billions or trillions of cells. Strangely these eggs develop well initially but then hit a wall and just die late incubation, at hatch or even in the brooder, chicks are weak, deformed, underdeveloped or just fade away. The only thing you can do is treat your preincubated eggs well and make sure your incubator temp is stable (external thermometer). Genetics or nutrition of source flock may also be an issue but this is less common.

 

[LeaB]

They weren't shipped and they were less than 10 days old. I guess I'll try again and see how it goes.