Day 20! What's going on???!!!

[Amy's Animals]

I have 4 silkies eggs (under my hen, no bator) that I "checked"

today, day 20 (chicks tomorow!), while the hen was off to eat and take a dust bath and so on. I carefully inspected each egg and noticed one egg weighed less then the others and had some small subsuface cracks near the smallest end of the egg. I'm new to this and these are my first chicks that I hatch myself, so whats going on?? Why does this egg weigh less then the others??

Is this one hatching already??

Any answers are greatly appreciated

 

[Chotii]

My best guess is, that egg is dead and has dried out (evaporated, and thus lost weight) rather than rotting (or maybe in addition to rotting). That would make it something of a mummy-egg?

I have one egg (pipped now, day 21) that arrived to me in the mail with a small crack like you describe at the small end. I sealed it with candle wax and crossed my fingers. It may yet hatch! It looks good so far, anyway. But yes, it did develop an air pocket at the small end of the egg despite having a wax seal, and if I had not put wax or some other cover on it I can only imagine how large that air pocket would have grown.

 

[Amy's Animals]

Hmm, well I'm pretty sure the tiny cracks were not there before. Do you know how/why the egg would have "evaporated"??

I hope for you that you'll have a good hatch!

I guess I'll find out tommorow how many hatch.

 

[SpunkyTheMonkey]

the cracks will be helping fluid evaporate away from the egg faster than the others. if it's not smelling just leave it there and see what happens since it's day 20 already. if it happened very recently, maybe it'll hatch anyway...you'll soon see.

good luck.