Day 5 - no veins, no air sacs?

[Mellowmalt]

at day 5 one should see more than we are seeing so to me it looks like temps are too low or something isn't right.

 

[Tonyroo]

The beginning of incubation, you don't have to be too accurate with humidity, less is better for it, helps the eggs to remove water weight out of the egg. At day 5 is when you need to maintain 35 to 45 humidity all the way to day 17. Don't worry about opening the incubator for 5 minutes, it's fine. And don't let your temperature swing it's important to get close to 99.5 at all times. And if your incubator is big you will have cooler spots, so late hatching.

 

[Tonyroo]

I'm in the Netherlands, Arnhem area to be precise. Altitude is 127 feet.

We've been having weird weather the past few days (snow, hail, rain, warm sun, strong winds, all in a span of 2 hours, alternating, lol). Our house is built out of wood so I think the humidity in the house is higher than usual. Stays damp outside for longer too, it seems, since we live in a forested area.

If your ambient air is high in humidity don't add water to the incubator or very little.

 

[Artichoke Lover]

It’s still a little early and they may be a little delayed if they got cold. Like others said I wouldn’t give up until day 10.

 

[LoreWalker]

Temp has been between 99.5F-99.8F the whole time, so thankfully that seems steady.

It's the humidity that has been kinda troublesome. Anywhere from 35 to about 60 the first 2 days (thankfully it has an alarm for that!). The past 3 days it had stabilised at 45-55 and today I've been trying to lower that so it'll stay at 35-45 humidity.

The incubator has ridges in the bottom for controlling the surface area of the water. I'm only using a small portion and I've made that part smaller yet twice today. First time in the morning when I refilled the water, 2nd time later today when the eggs had to be taken out for candling. It's currently sitting at 46%.

 

[LoreWalker]

I couldn't help myself and quickly checked the eggs today as I was refilling the water. (Humidity has been between 35 and 47, not perfect but a lot better and steadier than before!)

I could see the air sacs in the eggs quite a bit better now, in most of the eggs rather than just a few. I think there's darker spots in at least a couple of them, but it proofed impossible to photograph, and unfortunately I couldn't spot any veins in my porous eggs. Hopefully in 2 or so days they'll be developed a little more and I can upload them here for your input

 

[LoreWalker]

Day 10 update!

I took pictures of all 22 of my eggs, I'm starting to wonder if my light isn't strong enough, though I realise it may just be bad luck and I have 0 live eggs... So I have my fingers crossed!
I'm having a very hard time "seeing" anything, especially compared to the pictures I see in other threads or on the learning center. I'm using a LED flashlight with 6 or 7 LEDs that came with the incubator, but maybe I should buy something else?

I've linked the pictures below, I figured it would be a bit extreme to upload all of the images here...
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Today marks the 10th full day in the incubator.

Egg pictures

 

[K0k0shka]

Day 10 update!

I took pictures of all 22 of my eggs, I'm starting to wonder if my light isn't strong enough, though I realise it may just be bad luck and I have 0 live eggs... So I have my fingers crossed!
I'm having a very hard time "seeing" anything, especially compared to the pictures I see in other threads or on the learning center. I'm using a LED flashlight with 6 or 7 LEDs that came with the incubator, but maybe I should buy something else?

I've linked the pictures below, I figured it would be a bit extreme to upload all of the images here...
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Today marks the 10th full day in the incubator.

https://imgur.com/a/DTWShZe

I'm sorry to say but this egg does not look like it's developing at all. By day 10 you should be seeing thick veins, a dark mass at the pointy end (yolk and embryo), and even movement in some eggs. I see the caption on the photo says Barnevelder. For reference, here's one of my Barnevelder eggs from last year on day 10.

Where did your eggs come from? Can you verify fertility? It would be odd that zero would be developing if they are fertilized. Your incubation parameters don't seem that far off - certainly nowhere near extreme enough to explain zero development in that many eggs. Are your thermometer and hygrometer calibrated? Maybe the thermometer is just showing the wrong temperature and they've been either too hot or too cold without you realizing it?

 

[LoreWalker]

I'm sorry to say but this egg does not look like it's developing at all. By day 10 you should be seeing thick veins, a dark mass at the pointy end (yolk and embryo), and even movement in some eggs. I see the caption on the photo says Barnevelder. For reference, here's one of my Barnevelder eggs from last year on day 10.

View attachment 2616907

Where did your eggs come from? Can you verify fertility? It would be odd that zero would be developing if they are fertilized. Your incubation parameters don't seem that far off - certainly nowhere near extreme enough to explain zero development in that many eggs. Are your thermometer and hygrometer calibrated? Maybe the thermometer is just showing the wrong temperature and they've been either too hot or too cold without you realizing it?

Thanks for your reply!
There's 22 images but it kept uploading as some sort of slideshow, it should be a link in stead, now? Not that there's much else to see, honestly. What little could see was near impossible to photograph. But then again, my light can't "pick up" the air sacs as clearly as I see in most pictures, either. I can see a faint line if I hold the egg at an angle, but even then only at the top.

Five of the eggs (North Holland Blues) are from a friend's hens and rooster and they've bred before, so they should be fertilized. Could just be bad luck, though.
The other 19 are my own. Our rooster does breed with them and in the eggs we eat I regularly see the white bullseye, so in theory at least some should be fertile.

At this point, all I can think of still being off, would be the humidity. Wouldn't be too surprised with how much it jumped around the first few days. The temperature I measured with a separate thermometer a couple of times as well. Maybe off by .1 higher or lower, which shouldn't matter much?

I'll look into buying a separate hygrometer for a next batch, not giving up yet! Might crack open a few of the eggs later today to see if they were at any point viable as well.

 

[LoreWalker]

I opened up a bunch of eggs today to check for any development, but none had any. I do believe they were fertile? All of them had a spot on the yolk (like on the left on the picture below), some slightly different shapes though.

I suspect my coop may have been colder at night than I thought it was, so they may have already been "dead" before I even put them in the incubator.

I have 9 eggs left in the incubator, although at this point, I doubt any of them have chicks growing inside. (The 5 eggs a friend gave me are among them)

I'm going to look into getting a new hygrometer, as I suspect the one built into the incubator is inaccurate.
I used a human in-ear thermometer (it's what I had on hand) a couple times to measure inside the machine. At least the temperature seems accurate and has been steady.