day 21

[oldorchardfarms]

ok this is killing me it only piped a small hole, it was peeping a lot but now i see nothing again, could i be doing something wrong?

it piped around 10:30 am and now it is almost 3 pm I NEED HELP IM GOING CRAZY, I WANT THE BABYS TO COME OUT!!!

 

[Gypsy07]

Calm down. You have to calm down right now otherwise you're going to do something silly like try to 'help' the chick to hatch and you'll end up killing it by dragging it out of the shell before it's ready to hatch out. You're not doing anything wrong. You have to stop thinking that you should be doing anything at all right now. If you've got your temp stable and your humidity up high, you've done everything that you can and you've done it right. Now just sit back, try to relax, and DON'T open the bator. After pipping, chicks can take another 36 hours to hatch. It's perfectly normal. If you think it's hard to wait that long, you should try ducks, they usually take a minimum of 36 hours, and can go two days easy before they pop out. Now that really IS torture!

If it helps you to wait, try to understand the whole hatching process. Chicks don't pip the shell because they're ready to pop out right there and then, they pip the shell because they're running out of oxygen in there and if they don't, they'll suffocate! So they pip, and start breathing fresh air, but they still have a lot of developing to do. When they pip, their yolk sac is still external and attached to their umbilicus, and you REALLY don't want them hatching out before they've absorbed that. So they rest in the shell, breathing the fresh air, slowly absorbing their yolk sac and building their strength up for the fnal push, when they zip round the shell and pop the top off. The resting stage is an absolutely essential part of the hatching process and you just have to learn to let them get on with it in their own time.

Good luck. I hope you have some chickies out very soon. Before you just burst with excitement. LOL! I remember my first hatch being the same...

 

[oldorchardfarms]

Quote:
Ok i thought they hatched right after they piped, that feels a little better!!!! i am ready to burst this is taking forever it seems!

we did a bunch from a mixed pen that has a lot of diffrent chickens in it so i am excited to see what we end up with also!!! and i honestly did not think we could hatch any!

 

[raymondjames]

Yep i had the same issue and i helped.
But not all bad. The chick was dying from lack of oxygen (couldnt peck through membrane) and it absorbed the yolk and was very weak. She is alive and strong now, but note that i helped in a desperate situation.

 

[oldorchardfarms]

Thank you, i think that may have what happened to the other one. so if they dont pip a bigger hole with in 4 hours i will pull some membrane a way from there hole to help with breathing and let them go from there

 

[oldorchardfarms]

Well still waiting!!! for this chick to come out we can see it's wing and it is yellow( wounder what it is

)! We candled the rest because no one else piped and we think out of ore total bunch (2 set 2 days after first bunch) 6 are no good but no sense in coming this far and not giving it a go so they have been move to seperat side of bator, so with

we get 3 more to pip

 

[Gypsy07]

Quote:
Really, you should try to just leave them alone and do it themselves. As long as they are otherwise healthy (i.e. not deformed or badly positioned in the egg, neither of which you can do anything about) and your humidity is high enough, they won't need help to hatch. They won't need you to pick a bigger air hole for them. By doing so, you could cause the humidity in your bator to drop, and cause your chick that you think you're 'helping' to become stuck in the shell and unable to turn and zip his way out. Please, try to just leave them alone and see how it pans out.

 

[raymondjames]

Quote:
unless your a chicken person, nobody else can understand the shock when you see what color it is inside the egg. Example: I got a black Rhode island red

 

[oldorchardfarms]

So i did help the baby out finally tonight at 6:30 the egg was sticking kinda to the baby, but he/she is healthy and very active, seems how i have my bator next to my head i know i will get no sleep!, no others have piped yet

 

[oldorchardfarms]

So we just hatched are one and only and i opened the rest because of no movement and we had nothing

And the one that

i named gross as it was the first one seen move!!! BUT she has a "dead" leg anyone know what could have caused this? i am glad i halped her out because she would have never made it on her own with one working leg.