Failed Attempt at Hatching Pekin Bantam Eggs

[justin0803]

Hi there everyone!

I recently went to a breeder and got 6 Mille fluer and Porcelain Pekin bantam eggs. I have a Janoel 24s incubator.
She had been saving them for a week which I have read is perfectly fine.
I candled the eggs at day 8 and saw that 5/6 eggs were developing which was great!
Soon, day 19 came and I had my first chick pip and started cheaping - music to my ears.
However, this chick quickly went silent. I refrained from taking it out to see what the go was as I know that would have jeopardised the others, so I waited.
second chick pipped and very quickly unzipped it's egg and was perfectly healthy. Another soon followed and got spraddle leg, however, is now perfeclty fine after treating it.
My issue comes next. day 22 I decide to take out the two chicks and the silent egg and find that the pipped egg was dead. The two remaining eggs were not pipped up until day 23. and so I took them both out to candle them to see if they had died. after giving them plenty of time to move I surmised that they had both died. I started doing an eggtopsy on the one egg and saw that, yes, the baby had died in the egg. The second I decided to open from the air cell side and low and behold, the chick was moving!!! I felt horrible but at the same time I felt that I did everything I had learnt online and from articles.
This chick is fine and it's been another 24 hours. Tonight I will attempt to help it out and see if it will survive as I spent a lot on these eggs and would rather help than not at all.

My incubator ran very consistently at 37.5 degrees Celsius the whole time and I even increased the humidity at lockdown as recommended by many places. I just don't know what went wrong? Any help and assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Juss

 

[Yardmom]

What was the humidity in the first 18 days? What was it after lockdown? Did you do use an external thermometer to confirm the temperature? Were any of the eggs shaken enough to affect the air cells etc?
Even when everything is "just right" not every chick will develop and hatch perfectly.

 

[justin0803]

What was the humidity in the first 18 days? What was it after lockdown? Did you do use an external thermometer to confirm the temperature? Were any of the eggs shaken enough to affect the air cells etc?
Even when everything is "just right" not every chick will develop and hatch perfectly.

Hi there! Thank you for your response. The incubator I have doesn’t have a humidity gauge. It has a slot at the top that you can open to manually control humidity. The bottom was filled with just water in the beginning. On lock down I added drenched sponges and more water as well as closing the hole in the lid of the incubator as instructed online.
I didn’t use an external thermometer at all.
None of the eggs had detached egg cells at all as I ensured that they were not shaken up transporting them from the breeder to my place. I candles them before hand to check this. Okay, thank you. Does it sound like this was a humidity issue? Thanks, J

 

[Yardmom]

I would suggest you get something that reads what the humidity is. There is no way to tell if your humidity affected your last hatch.
The relative humidity in the air affects what you need to do in the incubator to achieve the incubating/ hatching humidity. If I would follow the directions that come with a incubator here, in the summer all my chicks would drown.

 

[justin0803]

I would suggest you get something that reads what the humidity is. There is no way to tell if your humidity affected your last hatch.
The relative humidity in the air affects what you need to do in the incubator to achieve the incubating/ hatching humidity. If I would follow the directions that come with a incubator here, in the summer all my chicks would drown.

I think I will definitely try that. I live in South East Queensland in Australia so the humidity in the air is relatively high. Thank you for all your help

 

[NatJ]

The incubator I have doesn’t have a humidity gauge. It has a slot at the top that you can open to manually control humidity. The bottom was filled with just water in the beginning. On lock down I added drenched sponges and more water as well as closing the hole in the lid of the incubator as instructed online.

You can check humidity by candling the eggs as they grow.
There are many charts online that show lines for air cell sizes at specific points (usually 7 days, 14 days, and close to hatch.)

If your eggs have air cells about the same size as the ones on the charts, the humidity should be fine.

If your eggs have air cells much smaller than the charts show, then your humidity is too high and you need to lower it (to let more moisture evaporate out of the egg.)

If your eggs have very big air cells, then they are losing water too fast, and you need to raise the humidity.

It is also possible to check humidity by weighing the eggs before you set them, and at intervals. I forget how much weight they are supposed to lose during incubation, but it is some percent of their starting weight.

When they are actually hatching the humidity matters, because you need the air moist while the chick is hatching. During the rest of incubation, what really matters is for the egg to lose the right amount of water, so the air cell gets bigger at about the right rate. The recommendations about humidity are based on making that happen.

I do not know if you had a humidity problem or not, but if you remember noticing air cell sizes you might be able to figure it out. Otherwise, this is just a way that you can check humidity for future batches, but too late to be useful for this batch.