Egg Turner Stopped Working During Incubation

[quailheart]

Hello everyone, I’ve kind of been in panic mode when I recently found out that my egg turner is not working. It’s day 2 of incubation, we are incubating around 30 quail eggs, and the egg turner has not been working since day 0. I never thought anything of it since it turns so slowly, I thought I had just happened to look at it while it was tilting one direction every time. It’s Easter today and all the farm stores near me are closed, but tomorrow I hope to go out and get a replacement for my egg turner or a whole new incubator if I have to. I guess my question is, will this setback affect the hatch? Will it lower the hatch rate? Again it’s only day 2 of incubation, glad I caught it early-ish! Also it would be very helpful if y’all could answer brutally honest. I just want to know how bad this hatch will be! Thank you for your help! I appreciate it.

 

[quailheart]

Ok! Glad to hear that everything should be alright! I may have overreacted a bit since when I was researching about turning eggs every post made it seem like turning your eggs was a huge deal and if you didn't do it correctly it might ruin your hatch. For anyone wondering, this is my incubator that I'm using. It's a cheap little thing but it works fine for what I'm using it for. Thank you to everyone who replied!

 

[Coops Dad]

May want to google how to reset your incubator. I have read with the NR360 if you don’t reset the turner wont work correctly!

I installed the bottom tray upside down and it didn't allow the turner ring to engage the turner shaft.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

I think it will be fine. Honestly.
It shouldn't affect your hatch rate at all, it's a good thing you caught it early on so you can get to turning them now.

 

[Coops Dad]

There are some people who claim that turning eggs is unnecessary and chickens don't really "turn" eggs as much as accidentally shuffle them as they reposition themselves on the nest.

I Use a Nurture Right 360 and accidentally installed the turner wrong once. I could hear the turner make its noise every 4 hours and assumed it was working. After the hatch as I was breaking it down for cleaning, I discovered my mistake. That hatch went 17/22 with 3 duds and 2 that quit early. No defective or malformed chicks. Take that for what it's worth.

IDK why italics.

 

[peepdaddy]

Which incubator do you have?

I have an old FI incubator from a yard sale (bought for $10.00) and a homemade one I built. They each have a tray style turner that holds 42 eggs. I don't even remember where these turners came from but I believe I bought one with an incubator I bought new around 15 years ago and I think one came with the yard sale incubator. The turners are the only things that are reliable in either incubator.

 

[quailheart]

Thank you everyone for replying, you all were a great help! Turns out all I needed to do was unplug the turner from the inside of the incubator and plug it in again! Everything is running smoothly now. Can't wait for the eggs to hatch soon, thanks again!

 

[quailheart]

I know it’s late but I just found this thread and I was curious, can we get an update?

Of course! What (I think) I did wrong was I didn’t plug the turner in well enough. My egg turner isn’t as simple to plug in/ unplug as I would like, so I must’ve not pushed it in hard enough at first. The eggs went for 2 or 3 days without turning, but everything ended ok. I ended up with about a 50% hatch rate, but multiple chicks died a few days after hatching. When the hatch was finished I went through all the eggs and there was a good number of chicks at different stages of development. I don’t think the egg turner situation had anything to do with some chicks not making it but I could be wrong. I hope this helped, let me know if you have any ore questions!

 

[peepdaddy]

I don't believe it will cause any problems. If you can't find a turner, or another incubator, quickly then you could always take them out of the broken turner and turn them manually in the meantime.

 

[Iluveggers]

Which incubator do you have?