Egg-topsy - did I give up too soon?

[Ambera]

Hi, first time hatcher here. I feel I have made a mistake here but wish to get some opinions on what happened...

I had a broody hen sat on 3 eggs (homebred, bantam Pekin cockerel x Lohmann Hen). All eggs were set at the same time, and were laid within 1 day of each other.
1 hatched on Tuesday 19th, and I removed the final two eggs on Thursday night. Here's the details of the egg-topsy from my other thread (following my chicks development!):


I decided to open up the two unhatched eggs today ... and now I feel a bit sick from guilt.
One egg was obviously never going to hatch and stopped developing halfway. But the final egg was a fully formed chick, looking so perfect and ready to live! I hate myself for removing the egg and not giving it more time...

I took the egg out from under my broody when I introduced two new chicks I had bought for the lonely hatch, so that was on the end of Day 24 (56 hours after the first one hatched).
It had not pipped at all. I candled it when I removed it, and could see the chick wasn't moving. It has a blood splodge/splatter (which you can now see in the shell in the photos below), and it looked like the chick was facing the wrong way? The head was at the narrow end, away from the airsack? I tapped it and it made no noise, and I had not heard a PEEP from it all this time.... I also had done the float test earlier that day, it floated horizontally, did not move and was about 40% out of the water. The blood splodge was there when I did the float test, so it didn't happen after that.... I put it back in the nest for another 12 hours after the float test, then I finally removed it.

There was no liquid in the egg when I cracked it, so I guess it had absorbed it's yolk? There were a few veins and the blood splodge I mentioned, and the membrane was in-tact and hadn't shrink wrapped or anything.

See the photos in the spoiler (in case you're squeamish!)

Spoiler: Egg-topsy Photos

I feel horrible that I may have killed the chick when it did have a chance! I can only hope that it had already died, after failing to get out as it was facing the wrong way?

PLEASE tell me if you see anything unsual in the photos, or what you think happened. Even if it's the truth that I just took it out too early... It would help to have some closure on this poor chick...

I wish I had left it another day to give it a chance, but I thought I should take it out when I added the new chicks for the broody to foster, so that she thought it had hatched and accepted the new chicks.... At least the good thing is I got 3 chicks out of this, rather than 2 (so more chance of a hen!), as I wouldn't have gone and bought more chicks if this one had hatched....

It's all a learning experince, and I know what to do (and not do!!) next time...

 

[NatJ]

I decided to open up the two unhatched eggs today ... and now I feel a bit sick from guilt.
One egg was obviously never going to hatch and stopped developing halfway. But the final egg was a fully formed chick, looking so perfect and ready to live! I hate myself for removing the egg and not giving it more time...

I took the egg out from under my broody when I introduced two new chicks I had bought for the lonely hatch, so that was on the end of Day 24 (56 hours after the first one hatched).

I think it was probably dead before you took the egg away from the broody.

If you have a case like that in the future, I would suggest you do the eggtopsy right away. If you find the chick to be alive, you can turn the eggtopsy into an assisted hatch at that point. More likely you would find the chick to be already dead, and you wouldn't feel guilty about whether you caused it to die.

 

[Ambera]

@NatJ
Thank you, I'm hoping it was dead before...

I should have opened it right away, good lesson there for future! Would be less guilt that way... I didn't have an incubator or anything so I ended up just leaving the unhatched eggs in the greenhouse for a couple of days until I could face opening them....

 

[Allsfairinloveandbugs]

Based on your timeline and descriptions, I too believe the chick was already dead when you removed the egg. It is always sad to see a fully developed chick that for whatever reason(s) died before pipping. If the chick's head was on the wrong side of the egg, it may have suffocated.