Failed Eggs Due to Malpositions

[DallasChickyMomma]

I went to go look in the incubator because I had a suspicion that we had some dead or dying eggs, based on my observations last night when looking at the baby that was having hatch issues. This morning I felt them and they quickly cooled after being pulled from the incubator and handled... so I went ahead and drilled a small hole into one's air cell. It was quite fully formed and quite dead. I pulled it all apart and it was positioned all kinds of weird, like it got confused and couldn't get out. I checked all the rest of them, and except for one, they were all like this. These were shipped eggs, and I have read that this can be an issue. Is there a way in the future to help these babies out, early signs to look for without potentially damaging other babies that are good in their shells? Or is this just a part of it type thing? That was 4 total babies that died because of this.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

What was your humidity at? If the humidity is too high the chick grows to large and cannot turn to get in position to hatch. That being said there are usually a couple malpositioned chicks even in a normal hatch, certainly not 90% of them though.

 

[DallasChickyMomma]

The humidity was in the 30-40% range until day 18, when I bumped it up. After some reading, I think I am having a temperature issue, it may have been too high.