dead chicks in the egg

[Pywakyt]

So we had about half (13) of our eggs end up having full grown chicks, some with the yolk absorbed some not, in them that were dead. We had one pip and die within six hours no zipping, yolk absorbed. after reading one of the articles i think the thing they all had in common was waiting too long to incubate them, some 14 days. my question is how does this cause that? how does waiting too long to incubate cause a chick to develop then just die?
we had about 8 hatch, one has a bum leg one died already and the rest of the clutch were duds

 

[AlleysChicks]

I just hatched out a mix of old eggs and new. 22/24 hatched. The old eggs were older than 3 weeks.

How did the air cells look? And what was your humidity during incubation and lockdown?

 

[Pyxis]

Can you tell us about your incubation practices? Temperature, humidity, etc? The ones that don't make it, do you open them up after to try to see what went wrong? Anything unusual stick out, like excess liquid?

 

[Spartan22]

It could be humidity issues, especially on lockdown?

 

[Pywakyt]

temp is just about 100 thru out the whole process, humidity was as low as 18% in the begging but during lockdown up to 88%. now that you mention it there did seem to be quite a bit of liquid in the eggs of the dead chicks, i broke open every single "dud" trying to find and answer. the air sac i dont know cause i didnt candle any of them this time.

 

[Spartan22]

I normally set my ’bator on 99.5 temp thruout and 45-50 humidity and raise it to 60 on lockdown and I’d been getting 90++ rate hatch.

 

[Pywakyt]

hmm so perhaps the humidity was too high and they "drowned"

 

[Pyxis]

temp is just about 100 thru out the whole process, humidity was as low as 18% in the begging but during lockdown up to 88%. now that you mention it there did seem to be quite a bit of liquid in the eggs of the dead chicks, i broke open every single "dud" trying to find and answer. the air sac i dont know cause i didnt candle any of them this time.

Extra liquid is a sign that humidity was too high. You might want to weigh the next batch to track moisture loss and pin down what you want the humidity to be.

 

[Pywakyt]

Ugh i feel like i killed the poor little things :'( but now i know for next time

 

[aart]

Test your thermometers and hygrometers before the next hatch.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...incubator-thermometers-and-hygrometers.73634/