Fertile eggs and no brooder - HELP!!

[mslibs]

Help!! I was sent home from school with 12 fertilized eggs that were in the brooder for 21 days and hadn't hatched.

Parent who had brought in the brooder wanted it back to put her duck eggs into. Parent said to throw away the unhatched chicken eggs and we just couldn't do that.

There were originally 14 eggs, one hatched night of 4/25 & one hatched last night. I have a broody hen that we've been trying to break so I thought I could slide these12 under her. Of course now she's not interested!!!

One of the eggs peeped on the way home and I can hear it!!! What do I do????

p.s. I don't have a brooder.

 

[Erka97]

Do whatever you can to keep them warm, either with warm water bottles or with a heat lamp, if you cannot get an incubator for them. I used to put duck eggs under a lamp in the last few days to hatch when their mothers left them, back before I got my incubator. You want to keep them up around 99 degrees, but don't go above 102 because that's also likely to kill them. By this stage, they should also be contributing some body heat of their own.
It's also a good idea to shine a light into the eggs and try to determine how many viable eggs you actually have.

 

[mslibs]

Thank you for the reply.

The peeped egg is making progress and we can hear her too!

Tried candling some of the others and it appears that most of them have large dark areas and air sacs.

I placed a heating pad under them and a desk lamp above them. They are in a glass dish with pine shavings on the bottom and a foil tent above, hoping to hold the heat from the light in. I have misted them a few times too.

I'll check on them during the night. Not quite sure what I'll do with the chick in the morning. At this point I'm thinking about trying to put the eggs in the favored nesting box in the morning and hope for the best. I hate that I have to go to work tomorrow!