Day 22 - Nothing :(

[Tiana's chickens]

e so I did candle them today very quickly and it doesnt look to good. at least IMO. Which my opinion is limited given this being our first time incubating.

1 Egg has almost certainly grown from dy 18 (which ws really day 17). the other 3 not so good. It looks like veins have disolved, and while I cant indentify a ring, it does seem like the matter from the veins is pooling at the bottom. It looks like theres a pool of "Blood like" stuff at the bottom. The chick is NOt filling the egg. Far from it.

The one egg that still apears to hold hope has grown sooo much. It's grown to the point im finding it worrying. I see nothing to guarantee an internal pip yet. However, I could see what looked like 2 beaks, (So perhaps the chick has its beak open and im seeing the upper and lower beak?!?!?)

Another worry, it looks like the shoulder or neck is pressing against the air cell. and the chick is filling the entire egg. Its pretty much All dark. But no movement seen. I did not candle it for more than about 10 seconds total. So I couldnt see much in that time.

We've had a new Hygrometer Arrive today. It is indicating that our Humidity was way low. Possibly around the 50% Region low.

Its all guessing at this point (untill the calibration pack/salt thing arrives in the post) but I feel 75% confident that we have RH% around 75%. It may be too little too late.

Hypothetically if I did have RH% Too low, can incresing the RH% to above normal. like 85% for e.g. help? or would that do more harm than good now?

Thanks for all your replies guys.

Yes I'd definitely up the humidity. Once I had very low humidity the everyday until day 20, we upped it to 99% (accidentally) and we had the chick hatch on day 21 (we only had one egg in the incubator). So I'd definitely increase the humidity more than the usual 70% if I were you. Also I've have healthy chicks hatch on day 26 so maybe just give a little more time.
At the moment the chicks should be completely filling the eggs so it's hard to see much, just will look very dark. You can take out any that clearly haven't grown which will be dead

 

[Jayson_Black]

Thank you Tiana's chickens

Thats reassuring to hear. Day 26 huh? Wow. I was thinking like day 24 might be the end.

Can I get anyone else to confirm what tiana said about upping the RH% to (hopefully) Compensate for a low earlier RH%. I am going to add 100ml of water right now.

So, is a too higher humidity better than too low?

So is say 95% RH not as lethal as say 50% RH?

Thanks so much

 

[Tiana's chickens]

Thank you Tiana's chickens

Thats reassuring to hear. Day 26 huh? Wow. I was thinking like day 24 might be the end.

Can I get anyone else to confirm what tiana said about upping the RH% to (hopefully) Compensate for a low earlier RH%. I am going to add 100ml of water right now.

So, is a too higher humidity better than too low?

So is say 95% RH not as lethal as say 50% RH?

Thanks so much

If you have really high humidity the entire 21 days they will just drown, however if it's really low the entire 21 days the chicks will get stuck on the membrane and not be able to turn around to hatch. So both can be as lethal.
I'm not sure if upping the humidity will work for you now but it's worked for me both times I did it, the first time on accident, the second time was for my friends chick who was under the broody hen , the hen stopped sitting on the egg (so it was exposed to extremely low humidity for hours) my friend rushed the egg to my place in the night, we put it in my incubator and I had the humidity extremely high to compensate for the moisture the egg had lost. The chick hatched 2 days later (day 26 yep) and turns out she's a perfectly healthy pullet so yay

 

[Tiana's chickens]

So I'd say just give it a go upping the humidity. Also if you end up candling again, maybe you could post some photos. And how many eggs do you have in your incubator?

 

[Jayson_Black]

Thanks again Tiana. We have 4 eggs in the incubator. I have added quite a bit more water. I have hopefully got it high enough now. I will candle again today and try to take some pictures. Especially of the ones I think may have died. There looks to be like a blood like substace pooling or rather pooled in 3 of them, maybe even the fourth, so I'll def try post some pics of that. I have no idea how they will turn out. Thanks again Tiana. Its nearly dark here. I'll wait till then. Its the end of Day 23 :/ Sighs

 

[Egghead_Jr]

I don't understand why you didn't calibrate hygrometer with your own salt and use a zip lock bag to put salt and hygrometer into. Salt in milk cap, saturate with water, put cap and hygrometer into a sealed container like large zip seal bag.

You can hatch at a lower humidity but what happens when a lot of chicks pip and zip at once is your humidity spikes. What I've seen is the album of egg when drying back out from humidity spike turns to glue and hardens and chicks are stuck fast to shells. It's easier to just keep the humidity above 70% so that doesn't happen.

It's about a day difference in hatch for every 0.5 degree off from 99.5 F. More like three days to two degrees. Thing to remember is if you don't have a forced air incubator your setting temp at top level of eggs to 101-102F. That's what throws a lot of first time hatches off. The other thing throwing hatch dates off is may count the day set as day one. It's not a day until 24 hours after setting. Easy to remember by the day you set, three weeks later that same day is day 21.

Yes, your oral thermometer in medicine cabinet is the most accurate tool you have for temp.

 

[Jayson_Black]

thanks for your post egghead. I didn't calibrate the hygrometers at first because I didn't have one, then because it was in use and I also didn't know about the salt thing. That just about brings us to here. I've only found out about the salt about 5 or 6 days ago. I had hoped they would have hatched by now and I could remove them and calibrate them. Is the problem the test takes like 24 hours yeah? I think I will probably leave one in overnight tonight. I mean, I don't watch the hygrometers while I sleep.

In the very early stages of development, the temperature was taken from above the eggs/ the heating element was a reptile heating mat. controlled by an eBay thermostat like the STC-1000. I think the temperature of the core of the egg could have been as low as 36c But I can't be certain. It's all guessing at the moment. We moved them into a Janoel 12 incubator. about Day 16. That's where they are now. While its temperature is easy to control the humidity is not. I think the bottom grate/mesh is not allowing enough evaporation, or enough heat to get to the water that lay on the bottom. I could be wrong, just seems that way.

Thanks for the information that's very helpful. I could expect the chicks potentially as late as they can possibly be. If they are to arrive at all.

 

[Jayson_Black]

So while candling them last night I took some photographs and video. the photographs did not work out at all. The video kind of did. It would probably help to have a purpose made candling torch with the soft end to help stop light leaks.

Whjile the Video is a bit rough, somehow, the color is perfect. It actually matches real life. At least on the camera monitor and computer monitor here. The color could look very different depending who is watching.

It particular I'd like to know what people think about the first egg and how the shoulder or back of neck is like pressing into the air cell, or the air cell apears to be shrink wrapping over the chicks neck/shoulder... maybe!

Also what I keep thinking is a blood stain. Is it? Or do things that look like blood stains/pools turn up all the time in Egg's?

Here is the Video

 

[Maddison]

that egg looks like its a day or two from hatching. I didn't calibrate or BUY a hygrometer so the few last eggs that pipped I had to assist after 24hrs, the last one I couldn't save because all the online articles I read said "it knows what it's doing leave it" well it didn't and it died as soon as you get a pip wait no more than 24hrs then assist ONLY if its made no progress, I should have with my last egg. basic rules just chip away at the egg where the pip is, keep going but if you see blood or yolk put it back in the bator, all the eggs I assisted were more than ready I just put them in the bator after getting the egg off assisted chicks tend to get sticky because they didn't hatch themselves, wait 1 hour after putting it into the incubator then give it a warm bath, then back into the incubator till it fluffs out.

there's little you can do with eggs so late in incubation at wrong conditions, if you feel your chicks are really dead, make a small hole in the fat side using a screw moving it gently back and forth to make a hole, being careful not to break the membrane. then chip away at the air cell ONLY if you see no movement! (leaving a hole in the egg is what people call a 'safety' hole and apparently helps the chick to pip if it cannot or so I've heard) no movement or stiff chicks means they're dead. if your chick is moving pop it back in the incubator, keeping in mind your egg can get shrinkwrapped if not done right so bump up that humidity! all the eggs I tried this on were dead in the egg, the longer you wait more than 25 days the more you risk them popping and contaminating your remainder eggs. the chicks I had that died in the egg was mostly due to poor humidity and some too high temps. with testing your hygrometer grab a bottle cap and fill it with salt, then add a bit of water to make a slurry not so much that the salt dissolves, put your hygrometer and cap in a sealable bag and wait 6 hours, it should show exactly %75 if its less/more add up for that, for example, my meter said it was %65 when in actual fact it was %75, so I would set it to %50 if I wanted %60.

edit: didn't watch the full video so I didn't know there was more than one egg, the other three look way to under-developed to be on day 22, usually when I candle eggs if they are slightly green or spotty in the egg they are usually starting to rot... when I do egg-topsys on long dead eggs theres lots of fluid surrounding the chick, which in candleing shows nothing but darkness or eggs that look really young when they are not, such as yours.

 

[Tiana's chickens]

I don't have as much candling experience as some but I think number 2 is definitely dead. The others aren't looking real good either, number 1 might be in with a chance, it's hard for me to really say sorry. Give it another 2-3 days. If it doesn't work out that's okay, just try again. I've heard of people listening for a heartbeat in the egg using a stethoscope, thatll tell you if they are still alive or not straight away