Egg stalled development or extremely slow?

[Susan Skylark]

Hi,

First time incubator/quail raiser (cortunix) and had a strange development with my first batch. I ordered some eggs that spent 8 days in the mail and then 5/15 were smashed. Incubated 10, 8 developed with one day 5 embryonic death (blood ring) and one slightly 'delayed' egg, obviously growing dark mass in this egg but I put it into lockdown with the other 6 and hoped it might catch up. The other six hatched just fine (albeit day 18/19 rather than day 17, possible low temp on the incubator). The other eggs all developed hairline cracks in the shell a few hours to several days before actually hatching, this one just sat there. I candled it when I took the first chick out and it was about 3/4 full of a dark mass (vs completely for the others, so still behind). Day 19 rolls around and my last chick is actively pipping/thinking about zipping and this egg is still doing nothing.

I wasn't going to run the incubator for another week so it would likely die anyway but I was curious so I did water candle the thing (candled it first, no cracks or holes, no internal pip) and there was obvious movement, this thing was alive the night of day 19. I put it back in the incubator with its hatching clutch mate and hoped for the best. The other chick was out the next morning and still this thing just sat there. I shut off the incubator and opened up the mysterious egg. It was a recently dead day 11 embryo: capillaries intact, all membranes and fluid looked normal, no autolysis (dead tissue begins to break down soon after death, especially in warm/humid environments, my day 5 embryonic death I opened day 7 and the fluid was cloudy, the limb buds were falling off, and the capillaries had disintegrated to form the blood ring).

What is a day 11 embryo doing alive on day 19? Did it develop to that point and stall out or did it develop so slowly that it only got to day 11 while everybody else hatched? I was using a nurture right 360 incubator with the standard chicken egg turner. I had six eggs in the center that did fine turning and one white egg with salt and pepper speckles (just like this egg) in the outer ring that kept getting turned around or tilted upwards and needed to be manually adjusted (will correct this for next time) a couple times a day. I thought it was the other salt and pepper egg that had the issue and the outer ring one hatched, but I could certainly be wrong. Did the turning difficulties and temp variations so slow this egg that it never fully developed? Just curious if anyone else has ever seen this sort of thing.

 

[FunClucks]

Hi,

First time incubator/quail raiser (cortunix) and had a strange development with my first batch. I ordered some eggs that spent 8 days in the mail and then 5/15 were smashed. Incubated 10, 8 developed with one day 5 embryonic death (blood ring) and one slightly 'delayed' egg, obviously growing dark mass in this egg but I put it into lockdown with the other 6 and hoped it might catch up. The other six hatched just fine (albeit day 18/19 rather than day 17, possible low temp on the incubator). The other eggs all developed hairline cracks in the shell a few hours to several days before actually hatching, this one just sat there. I candled it when I took the first chick out and it was about 3/4 full of a dark mass (vs completely for the others, so still behind). Day 19 rolls around and my last chick is actively pipping/thinking about zipping and this egg is still doing nothing.

I wasn't going to run the incubator for another week so it would likely die anyway but I was curious so I did water candle the thing (candled it first, no cracks or holes, no internal pip) and there was obvious movement, this thing was alive the night of day 19. I put it back in the incubator with its hatching clutch mate and hoped for the best. The other chick was out the next morning and still this thing just sat there. I shut off the incubator and opened up the mysterious egg. It was a recently dead day 11 embryo: capillaries intact, all membranes and fluid looked normal, no autolysis (dead tissue begins to break down soon after death, especially in warm/humid environments, my day 5 embryonic death I opened day 7 and the fluid was cloudy, the limb buds were falling off, and the capillaries had disintegrated to form the blood ring).

What is a day 11 embryo doing alive on day 19? Did it develop to that point and stall out or did it develop so slowly that it only got to day 11 while everybody else hatched? I was using a nurture right 360 incubator with the standard chicken egg turner. I had six eggs in the center that did fine turning and one white egg with salt and pepper speckles (just like this egg) in the outer ring that kept getting turned around or tilted upwards and needed to be manually adjusted (will correct this for next time) a couple times a day. I thought it was the other salt and pepper egg that had the issue and the outer ring one hatched, but I could certainly be wrong. Did the turning difficulties and temp variations so slow this egg that it never fully developed? Just curious if anyone else has ever seen this sort of thing.

I haven't done quail eggs, only chickens, but in my experience, when you have some that are slow to develop like that, they don't catch up. I had one that hatched two days after the others, and it turned out to have severe wry-beak, and eventually was culled. So, I'm of the opinion that the lagging eggs, the ones that don't finish developing, are generally due to genetic issues. Could be genetic issues due to damage during shipping. All the eggs I incubate are my own eggs, so no shipping issues for mine, and I've had very healthy 80-90% set-to-hatch hatches from some flocks, and very low survival hatches from other flocks with nothing physically wrong - everyone was healthy. After some research, I decided most of the issues were genetic, since the incubator was working perfectly on one flock's eggs, but not the other's. Also, one of the flocks that didn't have good hatchrate was a meatbird flock which was not designed to be bred, so I was not surprised to see issues in the lines when I kept them long enough for breeding.

If you post this query or link to it in the Quail area of this Forum, you may get more quail-specific answers.

 

[Susan Skylark]

Now that I am older and (hopefully) wiser, I realize my 'Day 11' embryo was actually a deformed chick, not just slow developing but abnormal development, could be due to genetics, nutrition of source flock, random chance, or shipping trauma.