Day 23, egg totally dark when candling?

[Erin80]

I’m trying to figure out if it’s bad. It was alive yesterday but looks like it used up all its air, didn’t pip, and then possibly died.

 

[getaclue]

Go into your bathroom, close the door, run the shower on hot, and steam up the bathroom. Get whatever tool you're going to use to poke a hole in the egg shell, and clean it. Get a couple paper towels too. Now, go get your egg, and take it into the bathroom. Carefully begin to poke your hole at the top portion of the egg, where the air cell would be. Usually a little of the shell can be peeled away, to expose the membrane. Poke a very tiny hole in the membrane. If it bleeds, STOP, and put the egg back in the incubator. If there is very little, or no blood, gently begin peeling back a little more of the shell on the top of the egg. Continue until you get a "peep hole" so you can see inside the egg a little bit. If there is no movement, continue peeling off a little more of the shell. At any point, if you see movement, put a bit of vaseline, or coconut oil on the exposed membrane, and return it to the incubator.

 

[Rachnicko]

How did you get on with the egg?

 

[Erin80]

How did you get on with the egg?

It had internally pipped but then died. Not sure what happened.

 

[Katie386]

I’m on day 18 of my first incubation and I’m freaking out.

 

[Erin80]

My temps were low due to a crappy incubator, so my guess is that the chicks formed but then were too weak to get out of eggs. I only had 2/7 hatch, the rest died between day 18 and day 22. Trying again with a new incubator this time that is actually holding steady at 100 degrees! I have silkie polish cross in there and some bantams so I’m reeeaaaallly hoping they make it! Some funky looking birds!

 

[getaclue]

100 on a still air incubator is good. 99.5 on a forced air incubator is good too. Pay attention to humidity. It can take a bit to learn to incubate.