development of opened "dead" chicks

[Cuban Longtails]

It sounds like you might have a temperature gradient in your incubator. The more stable temperature is in the middle of the incubator and lower near the edges. I'm not sure how you could correct it. Is your incubator still air or forced air (no fan or fan)?

 

[77horses]

I would say that they died around day 16-19 maybe?
Sorry for your loss; some hatches don't turn out so great, some are more successful. It's the chance you take when hatching your own eggs. It's great when you get cute little fluffy butts that are healthy, and it makes you want to try again. But it's not great at all when you have a bad hatch. But the best thing that I would do(not saying you should) is to try again and again until I get the problems corrected. For example, if I hatched some chicks and they died from too high humidity, I would try again and I would learn from my mistake, so I would fix it and hopefully get a better hatch rate.


When you figure this problem out, you can use it to learn when(if) you try hatching again.

Good luck!

 

[lacylahman]

thank you all for the wonderful advice. I think we will try again sometime soon. I am just amazed that it is soo complicated and difficult to reproduce a process that happens by itself in nature. I can't figure out how a hen knows to stop turning her eggs on the 18th day??!! That is amazing. For now we picked up some feed store chicks to get us started.

Lacy

 

[peaceful]

I think your chicks were further along than some are suggesting. I think they were getting closer to the hatch time. If the temperature was too low in the incubator in would slow the development of the chicks, so the actual day might not mean as much.
By opening the incubator during hatch time you changed the critical steady environment for a hatch. That might be where things went wrong.
I would suggest borrowing an incubator from someone who has had success with theirs and try again. I would not use your homemade incubator again with those results, just a set up for heartbreak.

 

[Chickbait]

What about lethal genes? could it be that? I had a hatch like this recently too, there was no explanation as I did everything the same as my first hatch, the only difference was with the bad hatch I kept them upright in egg cartons, the hatch before I layed them on the incubator bottom, perhaps it was that one small difference that made the hatch bad. I wound up with 1 chick from an initial 20 eggs, I figured if he hatched then I did something right and the rest must have been weak or lethals...dunno

 

[Lobzi]

Quote:
Steady temps toward the end just might be crucial. I noticed my broody hen did not leave the nest at all during the last few days. She just toughed it out. There was no tell-tail sign of her giant poo bombs in the pen and then the next I knew she had 3 little ones...all eggs hatches successfully. Just a guess as I am very new to this chicken farming stuff.

 

[TerriLaChicks]

I had that happen the first time I tried too, and my dead chicks looked just like yours. I read and read everything I could find on this forum, and I decided that my temps spiked too much during the last 3 days, plus my humidity was too high, plus I also opened the hatch & candled the eggs.
The next time I let my temps run a bit low, kept the humidity much lower, and kept my hands off the last five days! my hatch ran 1-2 days later but the chicks made it.
I poked a hole in the incubator & ran some aquarium tubing into it & used a syringe to add water when needed. I put the eggs in cartons & used a piece of 2x4 to tilt them.
I bought another hygrometer/thermometer & tested it against my other one & found they differed in temps/humidity.
I used a ziploc bag & duct tape to make a water wiggler (couldn't find one anywhere) & used those temps/humidity as my guide.
I did everything possible to avoid opening the incubator.
I agree, it is amazing that hens make this look so easy!

 

[Lobzi]

Yes, hens seem to know what they are doing. I have never hatched any eggs with a incubator so I dont have experience with it. I am reading a lot about other people's hatching experiences on this forum. Just a thought.... is too much fuss (checking, candling, rotating, temp control, humidity control) going on? Perhaps it doesnt have to be this complex. Honestly Im thinking of trying a experiment. I want to get some fertile eggs from my hen and place them under a heating pad turned on maybe medium heat. Leave it for 21 days and see what results. Maybe nothing, but then again, maybe it is that simple and I will have chickies.