Eggs hatching... soon?

[cshma11]

I'm heartbroken. Out of 36 eggs, only 1 is still alive. It's on day 13, and wobbled on the float test, and I can feel it moving in the egg when I held it in my hand. So it's sitting there in the incubator alone now. Temp is 100.5 and humidity is 67% right now and holding pretty steady. Do I need to do anything else? Most the shell? Put it under a light? Is there ANYTHING I can do to help give it a fighting chance?

 

[jojackc]

I put in 15 eggs 18 days ago. Out of all of them only one ended up being fertile and showed a chick in it before lock down. =( Now it looks like it didn't make it since it hasn't come out of its shell. Looked today and found that its peeping hole for some reason ended up being facing down instead of up. I guess it didn't get its self turned around. Sucks but I have 12 more eggs that I will set tonight and see if I can figure out how to do this right. This is my second time with no results.

 

[Q QUAIL S]

My first hatch 14 quail hatched out of 29!!! Which I think was a pretty good rate for my first time!!!!!!

 

[Q QUAIL S]

I looked at your post about doing the float test. My favorite website about quail said you shouldn't do the float test because it will take off the porous protective shell and the egg will be vulnerable to bacterial infections. You might do that with quail eggs but I think we are not supposed to.

 

[JaeG]

I'm heartbroken. Out of 36 eggs, only 1 is still alive. It's on day 13, and wobbled on the float test, and I can feel it moving in the egg when I held it in my hand. So it's sitting there in the incubator alone now. Temp is 100.5 and humidity is 67% right now and holding pretty steady. Do I need to do anything else? Most the shell? Put it under a light? Is there ANYTHING I can do to help give it a fighting chance?

I've only just seen this - it's Sunday morning where I am. How's it going? It's so hard waiting and not knowing. As long as your humidity stays up it should be able to hatch just fine. It's a good sign you could feel it moving in the egg (it's very cool when that happens). I've got my fingers crossed for you.

 

[JaeG]

I put in 15 eggs 18 days ago. Out of all of them only one ended up being fertile and showed a chick in it before lock down. =( Now it looks like it didn't make it since it hasn't come out of its shell. Looked today and found that its peeping hole for some reason ended up being facing down instead of up. I guess it didn't get its self turned around. Sucks but I have 12 more eggs that I will set tonight and see if I can figure out how to do this right. This is my second time with no results.

Do a Google search for 'incubator troubleshooting quail' and you should find lots of websites to help try and pin point what's going wrong. Hope you have more success on your next try.

 

[JaeG]

I looked at your post about doing the float test. My favorite website about quail said you shouldn't do the float test because it will take off the porous protective shell and the egg will be vulnerable to bacterial infections. You might do that with quail eggs but I think we are not supposed to.

That's a bit of an old wives tale (there are many in the world of poultry). Many people will wash their eggs before setting them especially if the eggs have come from an outside source to limit the risk of disease being carried in on them. And I figure if those who hatch very expensive pheasant eggs are happy to float test then they can't have had problems using this technique. I've done this a lot and never had a problem. The biggest danger is if you are checking overdue eggs and one has externally pipped without you noticing as you will drown the baby.

 

[cshma11]

That's a bit of an old wives tale (there are many in the world of poultry). Many people will wash their eggs before setting them especially if the eggs have come from an outside source to limit the risk of disease being carried in on them. And I figure if those who hatch very expensive pheasant eggs are happy to float test then they can't have had problems using this technique. I've done this a lot and never had a problem. The biggest danger is if you are checking overdue eggs and one has externally pipped without you noticing as you will drown the baby. 

That's what I had read several places, that as long as you make sure they are not pipped, it's ok to float in warm water. I only float tested the ones that were overdue because all had stopped moving and I suspected death but wanted to be sure before throwing them out. I carefully checked for pips before floating. Then the one that is still left I float tested to be sure it's alive because I didn't want to keep my hopes up for a dead chick, and just keep incubating it, you know?

I'm going to do some searches on troubleshooting, and see what I can find. We just added the quail rails and fan last week when most were already on lockdown, so maybe the more consistent/freqyent turning and circulated air will make a difference for now. I haven't seen any signs of mold or mildew, so I'm thinking it was a combination of bad luck, new-ish layers, and just a pretty basic incubator setup & no previous experience. I know it probably takes some practice and seeing what works vs what doesn't. I'm trying not to take it so hard.

 

[JaeG]

That's what I had read several places, that as long as you make sure they are not pipped, it's ok to float in warm water. I only float tested the ones that were overdue because all had stopped moving and I suspected death but wanted to be sure before throwing them out. I carefully checked for pips before floating. Then the one that is still left I float tested to be sure it's alive because I didn't want to keep my hopes up for a dead chick, and just keep incubating it, you know?

I'm going to do some searches on troubleshooting, and see what I can find. We just added the quail rails and fan last week when most were already on lockdown, so maybe the more consistent/freqyent turning and circulated air will make a difference for now. I haven't seen any signs of mold or mildew, so I'm thinking it was a combination of bad luck, new-ish layers, and just a pretty basic incubator setup & no previous experience. I know it probably takes some practice and seeing what works vs what doesn't. I'm trying not to take it so hard.

Crack open a few newly laid eggs to see if they are fertile or not as once the temperature starts to drop and the daylength decreases fertility will be reduced significantly. I've been trying to hatch eggs from my 2 year old quail and fertility is about 25% due to their age. We've managed to hatch 9 chicks from probably around 50 eggs! I've got some eggs due soon that I bought so we should get a lot more babies with that lot. I've been hatching them under my tiny bantam chickens as it's the start of summer here and I've had a lot of girls go broody. It gives them something to do! I'm in New Zealand and we don't have Coryza here which is the biggest disease concern when mixing chickens and quail.

It's hard not to be sad and disappointed when they don't hatch. People say you only have to wait 18 days but it's a long time when you don't know if you are going to be successful or not as you can't help but look forward to cute little babies, especially first time round (not that I'm ever less excited not matter how many times I hatch little ones). Hopefully you can figure out what's going wrong and keep trying - it's worth it as the babies are so adorable. And they grow so incredibly fast - it's crazy!

 

[cshma11]

I will try that! I wish we could have some bantams. Our city ordinances don't allow it with our property size. The only way we can keep our quail is because they're more than 150 feet away from each house next to us as long as we keep them in our garage. We have a 2.5 car garage and a driveway/parking area, so we park out there and keep the quail in the garage next to the window with a full spectrum light set to 14 or 16 hours a day (not sure as I'm in the car right now). Am I just looking for the tiny white ring on the dot on the yolk?