Do you think I killed them all?

[Sylviaanne]

Morning before last, early, early before the sun came up, I went to check on my incubators. One was reading 102 degrees so I turned it one notch to the right, toward the word Decrease. Went back to bed and when I got up several hours later, it read 106.

Obviously, I turned it the wrong way. I have 37 eggs, today they are 4 days in the incubator. I did leave them in the incubator.

I candled them this morning and some have floating yolks, some of them look red and some yellow, some of them I can see veins in, a couple have a dark spot of differing size, some of them look murky red inside, some of them I couldn't see into and a couple have shells that look freckled but look clear inside, like the shell varies in thickness.

I know that it is recommended anywhere between 3 days to 10 day to candle them the first time. Since I may have cooked some of them, is there anything in the above descriptions that would tell those of you who are experienced at candling and incubating at this early stage that any of the eggs are good or bad?

No, excuse for what happened but an explanation: I had taken some pills for my back and they really make me sleep. Otherwise I probably would have caught myself or at least caught it much sooner. Sylvia

 

[Kelsie2290]

Not sure if you have seen them but there are a couple of articles in the Learning Center that have pictures of what you should see candling on a day to day basis.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/candling-pics-progression-through-incubation-of-chicken-eggs and https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/hatching-eggs-101
At four days with a good embryo you should be seeing thin veins and a dark spot, basically something that looks like a spider...
Unfortunately from what the articles say, eggs under five days old or so are really sensitive to heat, so if your eggs were at 106* for hours you have probably lost a lot of them http://www.brinsea.com/customerservice/poweroff.html
If it has only been a short time since the heat surge, some of those that look OK may not be alive anymore either. I would be inclined to leave them in the incubator for a few more days and candle them again, sometimes the embryos are hard to see on 3-4 day old eggs, especially in darker shells.
Good luck with the hatch ......

 

[Sylviaanne]

I will check out the first link. I think I have seen all of them in the 2nd link but will look again. I was truly hoping someone would say that this early it might not do much damage. I think it had to be at least 6 hours. I know one person says to candle at 3 - 5 days and another says 7 - 10 days so I thought I should at least wait until day 10. That is 37 eggs, I sure hope I didn't kill them all.

Thank you for the good luck. This hatching will sure need it for any of them to have survived. Sylvia

 

[Sylviaanne]

Looking through my old threads and found this one. Thought I'd finish it. Out of 37 eggs that I cooked on the 2nd day I had 8 hatch. They are indistinguishable from the other chicks now.