day 20 today help!

[alexthechicken]

Hi everyone!
today is day 20 on my chicken eggs and they are currently still in my incubator. They still have no signs on pipping or hatching. What do i do? Help!!

 

[kitten6566]

they are supposed to hatch after day 21 so you have a day or so. if they dont hatch after day 30 then candle them.

 

[2plus2 is44]

What kind of incubator are you using? You should start getting Pips soon.

 

[cochins1088]

Ya, don't worry, I usually don't see pips until day 21. Incubator tempatures can also mess with when they hatch. If your temps. ran a little low, then there will be a late hatch, while if they run a little high, there will be an early hatch. Wait until day 25 at least to remove and candle the remaining eggs, especially if it's a late hatch because their are always some "late bloomers"

 

[Sphinx]

Has your temps been good?

I'm assuming you're hatching regular chicken eggs, right?

I usually start seeing pips about 12 hours before the 21 day mark. So, say that you set your eggs at 6pm on a Saturday. I would expect to start seeing pips about 6 am Saturday, 3 weeks later.

 

[alexthechicken]

What kind of incubator are you using? You should start getting Pips soon.

i am borrowing my friends hovabator. yes they are chicken eggs and still no pips or movement and its day 21

 

[cochins1088]

Did you candle during their incubation?

 

[Ridgerunner]

First, what you probably need to do is grab a bowl of vanilla ice cream, chop up some good fruit to mix in with it, enjoy it, and chill. Patience is usually your friend in these situations.

Are you counting your days right? It takes 24 hours of development for the eggs to get a day's worth of development. An easy way to figure it. The day of the week you set them is the day of the week they should hatch. If you set them on a Monday, they should hatch on a Monday.

Hatching is not an instantaneous process. An egg internal pips, external pips, and finally zips and the chick pops out. The chick is hard at work during this time. It has to learn to breathe air instead of live in a liquid world, absorb the yolk, dry up blood vessels outside its body it no longer needs, do something with that yuccky gel it is in so when it dries it dries fluffy instead of matted down, and who knows what else. Some chicks do a lot of this before external pip, some do a lot between external pip and zip, and a few haven't quite finished all this before they actually pop out. There is no set schedule for all this.

Ideally, a chick takes 21 days to develop, but we don't live in an ideal world. There are many things that can affect when an egg actually hatches; humidity, heredity, general size of the egg, how and how long it was stored before incubation started, and several other things. A really big criteria though is the average incubating temperature. If the average incubating temperature is a bit high, the eggs can pip up to three days early. I've had that happen. If the average incubating temperature is a bit cool they can be that much late. Don't be shocked if your inbcubation takes a day or more longer than you think it should. That happens to a lot of people. I've seen broody hens be off more than a full day too in hatch. It is really not an exact science for us. Maybe it is at the hatcheries where they have real tight control over everything, but certainly not for most of us.

As I said, try some patience. The odds are if you try to interfere in any way now, you are going to do a lot more harm than good. I also have no idea what you could do that would actually be helpful.

Good luck!!!!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Any updates?

 

[alexthechicken]

Any updates?

I am upset. it is day 22 now and still no signs of pipping. I woke up to the incubator at 105 degrees. without thinking i just opened it letting the air out. Someone please help. Are they dead?