Dry Hatching Cortunix Quails

[RosieR]

So I kept forgetting to update, 15 endef up hatching and living.

after I got new batteries put in my lux pro flashlight I could see through the eggs as good as chicken eggs, 40 were completely clear, 42 fertile that made it to last week, 2 fertile died after barely starting.

So they start pipping a few days ago, 10 or 11 came out right away, there were 10 or so that had pipped and died, I waited, then another pile pipped and died, time had passed so I looked and candled the rest, some had internally pipped and died , some had externally pipped and died. 18 hatched, 6 with help, 3 had unclosed belly buttons, 1 died on its own and the other two I let struggle for a few hours but we're getting worse so I had to put them out of their misery
So now I have 15, they are all doing good.

I lost 27 that either died after internally pipping or externally, the majority! I have never had such a high death rate! It was too sad. I did eggtopsies to try and see what went wrong, 90 percent of them had an almost neon green infection in the egg yolks! And hadn't quite finished absorbing the egg yolks either,. (Is this called mushy chicks?)
The eggs were rather dirty, I brushed them off as best I could but didn't spray them with listerine or alcohol or anything. I guess I should have.

So between half being infertile duds and then over half of the infertile dying, it was very disappointing.
Out of 84 eggs I got 15. Ugh! I will not be buying from this seller again, way too many infertile and eggs too dirty.

Very inconclusive on if the dry hatch had anything to do with it, they pipped fine and those healthy ones zipped fine, I think the high death rate was from dirty eggs, and a tendency for the temp to be high, this lousy 106 degree weather makes it very hard to keep the temps low enough, several times in the last week incubator got to 103, 104.

so I'm not going to try any more eggs until the fall, plus I will be carefully bleaching out my incubator so no poisonous bacteria remains.

Neon green doesn’t sound good. My current hatch I tried listerine to disinfect. I suspect I had some bacteria issues in the past. Locking down later today

 

[Sara L]

I just set eggs last night, first time I'm trying the Listerine solution. It's also a fertility test since I switched up some of the groupings. Not adding any water until lockdown, right now the humidity is about 35%.

 

[pinoyathletics]

15 of 84 is not a good rate. But consider its more 15 of 42 as 40 were infertiles. So you did better than I did. I had 6 of 15 fertiles. And 1 bled to death cause it had a hymophobe. I had 1 with a smaller hymophobe that survived and 4 others. And the 5 of them are nearly 2 weeks old. And some of them are growing faster than the other ones. In fact #3 and #4 are bigger than #1 and #2 to hatch. #5 was the hymophobe who is the smallest and they are going along nicely.

Two Browns, A Rosetta, An Italian and #5 is a Manchurian.
They were in my room for the first week, but after about 10 days. I put them in the shed. I put the heat lamp on them when its 15 or less at night and in the morning and the rest of the day they are fine in there little box.

Im on my 4th hatch now and went back to Standard 45-60 humidity, this time. However i candled on Day 6 and alot of the eggs look infertile. I have 2 roosters and 6 hens in a 3 x 3m pen. Im just wondering if this fertility issue is due to to much space. When they were in smaller containers the Roosters crowed more and bred with the hens.

I stopped using Listerine. I just make sure the eggs are clean with no poop or dirt attached.

Disappointing to get belly button hanging out did they survive. Alot of my last batch had haemophobe. One that died in the shell had a haemophobe almost tHe same size as the bird.

These are my 5 little Dinosaurs. The size difference is not evident in this photo but the two at the back in the middle are the biggest. They are huge, the last batch I had which may have contained a parent? at 1 week they were as big as the previous batch at 2 weeks. They have been fed chick starter from the start. Whereas the last batch got normal quail feed, and then chick starter after 2 1/2 weeks on.

View attachment 1486331

 

[Little Jerry Seinfeld]

15 of 84 is not a good rate. But consider its more 15 of 42 as 40 were infertiles. So you did better than I did. I had 6 of 15 fertiles. And 1 bled to death cause it had a hymophobe. I had 1 with a smaller hymophobe that survived and 4 others. And the 5 of them are nearly 2 weeks old. And some of them are growing faster than the other ones. In fact #3 and #4 are bigger than #1 and #2 to hatch. #5 was the hymophobe who is the smallest and they are going along nicely.

Two Browns, A Rosetta, An Italian and #5 is a Manchurian.
They were in my room for the first week, but after about 10 days. I put them in the shed. I put the heat lamp on them when its 15 or less at night and in the morning and the rest of the day they are fine in there little box.

Im on my 4th hatch now and went back to Standard 45-60 humidity, this time. However i candled on Day 6 and alot of the eggs look infertile. I have 2 roosters and 6 hens in a 3 x 3m pen. Im just wondering if this fertility issue is due to to much space. When they were in smaller containers the Roosters crowed more and bred with the hens.

I stopped using Listerine. I just make sure the eggs are clean with no poop or dirt attached.

Disappointing to get belly button hanging out did they survive. Alot of my last batch had haemophobe. One that died in the shell had a haemophobe almost tHe same size as the bird.

These are my 5 little Dinosaurs. The size difference is not evident in this photo but the two at the back in the middle are the biggest. They are huge, the last batch I had which may have contained a parent? at 1 week they were as big as the previous batch at 2 weeks. They have been fed chick starter from the start. Whereas the last batch got normal quail feed, and then chick starter after 2 1/2 weeks on.

View attachment 1486331

No, the 3 with belly button issues fdiyed, I ended up puttering 2 down and the other lived 2 days, I thought it was going to make it.
Interesting about the space causing less fertility I bet it does affect things...
I couldn't view the pic, (but that could jut be my phone its been causing trouble and messing up.)

 

[pinoyathletics]

Hatch #4 is a disaster. I thought it couldn't get worse than 3. Day 8 and 10. Started with 34 eggs, cracked opened 18 and then 9. Bringing it down to 7. Then when i was candling another I cracked it open by accident, and then i decided to cut it open to investigate. At first, I felt I was all good cause yolk came out first. Then a small fetus with an early beak dropped out. It was dead in the shell anyway as no blood came out.

Is this where it should have been at on day 11?? it looked like it had died around day 6-8.

 

[pinoyathletics]

I believe my largest quail chic, is a silver. I will take photos later. This means it from the mail order. Cause none of my current flock is Silver or have any traces of silver in their feathers.

All the quail eggs that came via the mail were Jumbos or A&M according to the supplier of the 24 eggs. Of those 24 eggs, at least 14 of them were infertile. So one of the remaining 10 is a Jumbo silver perhaps.

At 2 weeks of age, he/she is twice the size of 3 of the other 4 chics. Even bigger than the 2 born the day before.

 

[Sara L]

The silver color is incomplete dominant. So silver parents can have non-silver offspring but might have silver grandchildren. If you are trying to keep your colors separate you will need to track the family tree of your birds so you don't end up mixing colors.

 

[pinoyathletics]

The silver color is incomplete dominant. So silver parents can have non-silver offspring but might have silver grandchildren. If you are trying to keep your colors separate you will need to track the family tree of your birds so you don't end up mixing colors.

Im not sure but not just the colour. But the size of this quail chick is huge. Its like 3 weeks and twice the size of some of the other ones, or my last batch at the same age.

 

[Sara L]

Im not sure but not just the colour. But the size of this quail chick is huge. Its like 3 weeks and twice the size of some of the other ones, or my last batch at the same age.

Are you weighing or just going by visual? I've had birds that looked huge but weighed less than the ones that looked smaller. I hope this guy/gal? does turn out to be a jumbo and passes on those genetics. Most of the silvers I have are smaller, but they sure are pretty.

 

[pinoyathletics]

Tomorrow I will weigh and take a photo and post.