Disappointed...eggs not hatching.

[cmerk]

We have a variety of hens. One of our Buff's went broody on about a dozen eggs. One morning we went to the coop to find her off the nest and all the eggs were cold to the touch. The temperature had dropped through the night. We brought the eggs inside and honey opened all the them. One was just a glob of black. Only one had anything inside that even looked like a chick. We learned later we might have saved them is we put them in our oven at 150. Our oven doesn't go that low.

Just 25 days ago our Polish hen started sitting on 13 eggs. She was sitting on nine last count (what's up with that?) Walked into the coop to smell the worst smell I have ever noticed in my entire life. There was a broken egg under her with black stuff inside. Since it was 25 days and smelled so bad I removed the entire nest and we took it down to the garbage collection place.

My question is: Why the black gunk and why didn't either one of these nest produce even one chick?
Is it possible our rooster "Big Bad John" is sterile?

 

[Ridgerunner]

You can read a lot of stuff on the internet. You would have killed those eggs at 105 degrees, let alone 150. What you need is 100 degrees. You also need moisture. An over would be way too dry.

I’ve had a snake eat eggs out from under a broody hen. It would eat a few, go off and digest them, then come back a few days later for more. It’s possible something else happened to those three eggs, but it sounds like a snake is a real possibility.

I don’t know what that black glob is. What consistency did it have? Did it smell? I’ve never seen that, but that concerns me. Hopefully someone else has a clue.

When bacteria gets inside an egg, it has the perfect place to grow. The egg provides nutrients and incubating temperature is perfect for bacteria growth. When she lays an egg, the hen puts a coating on the egg called “bloom” that helps stop bacteria form getting inside. It’s pretty good at that but it is not perfect. If the egg is dirty, especially from poop, bacteria can get inside. That’s what happened to the egg that stank so badly. It’s pretty rare but that smell is horrible as too many of us know. When I’ve seen that, it has been yellowish, not black, but maybe someone else has had a different experience.

It’s possible your rooster is firing blanks. What I suggest is to open some eggs and look for the bull’s eye. If that bull’s eye is there, then the egg was fertile when it was laid. Here is a link to a threat that can help you with this. If you had one chick developing he is not firing total blanks, but his sperm could be really weak.

Fertile Egg Photos
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/16008/how-to-tell-a-fertile-vs-infertile-egg-pictures

There are different things that could cause an egg to not develop, the rooster’s fertility being only one of them. Most of them will not give you a total failure like you are seeing, but some are health, nutrition, and how and how long you store eggs before incubation.

You obviously want some chicks to hatch. I don’t know how you have been doing it, but I recommend the next time a hen goes broody you start saving all the eggs you want her to hatch and start them all at the same time. Mark them so you can tell which ones belong and check under her once a day after the other hens have finished laying so you can remove any eggs that don’t belong. These are still good to eat as long as you collect them once a day. You may already be doing all this.

Good luck with it. It’s normally not nearly this hard.