Eggtopsy: What happened to my egg? {Graphic Pictures}

[tootsi]

Thanks - this was very helpful. I lost a batch that died after lock down and now I know the humidity was too high. This article combined with others on this site will hopefully lead to a successful hatch next time around.

 

[CyndiChick]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/content/type/61/id/5784950/width/200/height/400[/IMG]

This is what we had in two eggs recently, though not as well formed and with a few less feathers developed. They both had an awful smell, but had no blood ring or any other sign of infectio . During incubation there was one temp spike on day 6, up to 106. Therr was one temp drop when our power went out , dropped to 90. Still have more in the bator, day 21 for a lot tomorrow, and day 20 for others. No sign of pips or peeps so far.

 

[launius]

So it's day 31 and none of these guys had internally pipped and there was no movement so i did eggtopsies to try and discover what might have happened. Would love to hear anyone's thoughts on what might have happened to these guys.

Duck egg 1:

Duck egg 2:

Duck egg 3:

Duck egg 4:

 

[lonnyandrinda]

The last two died a few days prior to hatch day. Has the temp and humidity been pretty stable? If so I would guess bacterial infection due to dirty eggs. I know duck eggs are notoriously dirty though. I haven't hatched many myself. The other two may also have succumbed to bacterial infection but it's hard to say for sure.

 

[launius]

The temp and humidity had been very steady. I did have a drop in humidity on day 29. Two of my eggs had hatched and the ducklings were stumbling around in there. I still don't know how this happened and had you asked me I would have told you it was impossible BUT...one of the ducklings ended up in the water bowl I was using to keep the humidity up. The duckling was able to hold itself out if the water so it didn't drown but as soon as I noticed the little guy in there I automatically opened up the incubator and removed both ducklings. Needless to say I won't be using that setup again! That was the only major change in humidity and I know enough of a change to do harm. None of the 4 had internally pipped so I am not sure if they were already dead by this point or not. Do you think 1 and 2 might have had a shot had I not opened the bator? I thought 3 and 4 looked like they had died before that.

 

[Jessie Jenkin]

why would you post pictures of dead baby chickens that is so bad

 

[maryhysong]

why would you post pictures of dead baby chickens that is so bad

Because that is what this thread is for, autopsying eggs that do not hatch to try and figure out when and why the chicks died. You can tell when they died by the amount of development in the egg, from barely started to fully formed. Sometimes you can also see things that will tell you why, but not always.

 

[launius]

It is to learn what went wrong. If you can learn why the chick/duckling died, then perhaps you can prevent deaths in the future. I am new to this and if it was my fault that a duckling didn't make it then I want to know that so I can remedy the problem. I know sometimes chicks/ducklings just don't make it and that is nature at work but when artificially incubating many deaths result from human error and those can and should be fixed. I, personally, would rather learn what went wrong to hopefully prevent needless and senseless deaths in the future as opposed to continuing to repeat the same mistake over and over.

 

[lonnyandrinda]

I doubt that one little humidity drop killed them. The two most likely causes of death in the two near term ducklings are bacterial infection or genetic abnormality in my opinion.

 

[dvoice]

Here are 2 pics of a dead chick. I did have temp and humidity problems from day 3-6 and after that temp. between 98.5 and 101.5 using a temporary thermostat for the remainder. Humidity from day 6-18 was 35-40%, I was trying a dry hatch. at day 18 I bumped it up to between 62-65%. I set a lot of eggs, I had quite a few infertile and numerous didn't go far. At lockup I had 45 eggs although being new I missed numerous that weren't feasible. I had 25 that were feasible and only one hatched. Most all look like this. By my estimation these died around day 18-20. Please if you are smarter than me(which shouldn't be difficult) please give me an educated probability of what happened before I set my next batch. Please no responses from ppl that do not have extensive experience because I can come up with my own guesses already. don't need more. Thanks