Eggs develope fully grown chicks, but then they don't hatch and die!

[Gypsy07]

Lari, I can think of a few things that might be going wrong with your hatches.

Firstly, what day do your chicks normally hatch on and are they usually healthy? I'm just wondering if your thermometer is accurate. If you haven't already done it, calibrate your thermometer and find out how accurate it is. A lot of people really like the Brinsea Spot Check thermometer for this, and I think they are usually more accurate than other digital probe thermometers. You might find that your temps have been off a bit...

Secondly, your initial humidity sounds like it could be too high. Some people do have very good results with high humidities (and very low ones too), but that's usually after a lot of trial and error to see what suits their bator and their local climate. In general, 35-40% for the first 18 days is a good place to start if you're new to incubating.

That's my thoughts anyway...

 

[Heckel's Hens]

NOT an expert by any means, but I totally believe thathumidity is often way too high. I don't know what makes a "dry" hatch, but mine was low the whole time and maybe 50% at hatch. Good success. One time it got too dry, but ti was very obvious that it was too dry.

Anyooo. I probably don't make much sense, but try lowering humidity, especially for the first 18 days.

 

[minihorse927]

The dry incubation methods work for LG's with a fan also. I have fans in both of my LG's and always incubate dry 1-18 then I only up my humidity to 50-60% (and 60 is high for my hatches). My humidity runs 30% most of the time during incubation. I mostly hatch shipped eggs here lately and my hatch rate is 80%. That is pretty good for shipped eggs. I have had some complete disasters but when it has happened it has always been chicks drown in shell cause they were soaked from the humidity getting way to high. Anything above 60% I start having drown chicks. I have had one chick the entire time that could not get out and it had pipped, zipped but never bothered to push the top of the egg shell off. I came home and had to run a warm wet towel aroud the zip to be able to get the membrane loose from the chick. Once I get the top off and the membrane is moist around the zip again, I let the chick kick out of the bottom half.

 

[redhd077]

Quote:
I've done alot of reading about how a fan will help stablize your temp and humidity. I think i will try a dry hatch but didn't know how it would work for a dry hatch! Thanks for the info.

 

[loprettaerin]

Quote:
Im glad you posted this, I was looking for anwsers on these shipped eggs chicks and what they were coming out like and they had the awnser and thankfully it was not anything to do with how I hatched it was on the breeders end.