Eggs in the incubator 24 days.

[Sylviaanne]

Ok, I still have 7 eggs left in the incubator from the hatch that was due the 12th. I am going to do the water test but want to know, if I should leave them go for a little longer? I hear nothing, I cannot see movement, what next?

Some of them I cannot see through at all, some are dark in the middle, some have the air sack at the top but I cannot see through the egg from the air sack all the way down to the bottom of the eggs. Sylvia

 

[sumi]

I've had one or three chicks hatch on day 25 before, so it's possible the eggs are still viable, but not very likely. If the egg is completely dark, but for the air cell, there is a chick in there. It's just figuring out if it's still alive... I'd open the eggs that candle completely dark, very carefully make a small hole above the air cell line and look for movement under the membrane. You can also take a wet Q-tip and carefully wipe the membrane covering the chick and see if it responds. If it does, put it back in the incubator with the humidity at at least 65% and give it time to hatch by itself. Fingers crossed!

 

[Sylviaanne]

I've had one or three chicks hatch on day 25 before, so it's possible the eggs are still viable, but not very likely. If the egg is completely dark, but for the air cell, there is a chick in there. It's just figuring out if it's still alive... I'd open the eggs that candle completely dark, very carefully make a small hole above the air cell line and look for movement under the membrane. You can also take a wet Q-tip and carefully wipe the membrane covering the chick and see if it responds. If it does, put it back in the incubator with the humidity at at least 65% and give it time to hatch by itself. Fingers crossed!

Thank you. I will give that a try. May I ask: What is your avatar? Sylvia

 

[Sylviaanne]

All 7 had a chick inside and liquid sloshing around. I didn't open them further. I don't know how but perhaps they drowned? At least I got 9 babies out of 37 eggs that I cooked on about the 3rd day. That was more than I expected. Sylvia

 

[Dragons4u]

It's possible they all died before before developing fully, or the humidity may have been too high for too long.
You had problems maintaining a constant humidity during that incubation right?

 

[Sylviaanne]

Yes, lots and lots of rain kept running the humidity in the incubators up.

 

[Michael OShay]

I don't think that I've ever had a chick hatch past day 23. If they haven't hatched by the end of the 24th day, I dispose of them.

 

[Michael OShay]

I don't think that I've ever had a chick hatch past day 23. If they haven't hatched by the end of the 24th day, I dispose of them.

I could be wrong. I've hatched a lot of chicks over the years and might have had one hatch on day 24 (my daughter says it happened). At my age, there's nothing wrong with my memory, it's just short. )

 

[Sylviaanne]

LOL Better than mine. My memory is like swiss cheese, full of holes and sometimes I think those holes are black holes from which nothing ever returns. LOL Sylvia

 

[sumi]

I'm sorry to hear they didn't make it, but I'm glad you got some in spite of the mishaps. I did that with my first ever incubator hatch. I used a faulty thermometer and I cooked half the eggs. Out of 57 we got 6 chicks, miraculously!

My avvie. That is a hole in a tunnel roof, on the Caha pass in Ireland (on the Cork/Kerry border). The hole is about 2 or 3 ft across and there is almost always water dripping from that hole, because it rains so much there. We took that pic on an exceptionally cold day in mid-winter, when the water froze and formed those icicles. The sun shining through the hole from above highlighted them like that. It was breathtaking sight.