eggs not hatching

[nigel5764]

HI ,any advice greatly welcome.the past few hatches have been very disapointing and i don,t know where im,e going wrong. going on my last hatch.i have a r-com suro incubator i bought a more precise thermometer and hygrometer to calibrate it with ,i put 24 eggs in ,steralised the incubator and cleaned eggs .incubator at 99.5 put no humidity in but was sitting at abought 40% until day 18 which i upped it to 65% of which 18 of my eggs were in chick.now this is where i dont understand where ive gon wrong from day 18 to hatch day only 4 hatched.On day 25 i called it a day,i cracked open the eggs to find dead fully formed chicks why havent they hatched.very upset and disallusioned backyard chicken member

 

[poultrycrazy711]

It can be from the slight lack of humidity- I just hatched 19 healthy chicks with a humidity level of 70-80 percent. It can also be because you wash the eggs before setting them. You are not supposed to wash eggs unless there is a large amount of debri on the eggs that can effect hatching. If the eggs have little specks all around it, that's ok. The reason you are not supposed to wash eggs is because it removes the bloom off the egg shell (the bloom is a protective coating on the egg that protects it from bacteria and disease). I washed an egg in my batch and put it in the incubator and was highly surprised when it did in fact hatch. But this was only because this egg had huge amounts of debri on its shell that would have affected its turning. It can also be from them getting stuck on the shell membrane causing them to not being able to pip and die. Also if you didnt stop turning at day 18 that could have caused the chicks to not be able to arrange themselves in the correct position to hatch and died that way. Or a simpilar reason is that they may have not been fertile. There is a lot of reasons an egg may not hatch.

 

[nigel5764]

Hi
Thanks a lot some good info.i did wipe eggs down with a egg wipe disifectant +my humidity was only 65% i am so confused why they get to day 18 fully formed but no hatch at day 21 but these two factors could be the key.
Thanks
Nigel