Filling the incubator 6-3-2011 Join me for my 1st attempt?

[Barrdwing]

Stitch81, I am so sorry for your loss.

It is really hard to have something like that happen, and sometimes even harder to figure out what went wrong. For what it's worth, I don't think the shrink-wrapping was due to your opening the lid. You made the right call there, by the way: having a lively chick bounding around in there belting the other eggs about can harm the eggs, and you just have to grit your teeth and open the incubator long enough to get the little devil out. I think there was something else going on to affect the water loss from the eggs.

There is an absolutely wonderful explanation thread somewhere on BYC that demonstrates how an egg can shrink-wrap even when the humidity was perfect the whole time, and I wish I'd bookmarked it, but here goes. Shrink-wrapping happens when an egg loses too much water over the course of incubation. There are two things that affect water loss. One is the humidity inside the incubator. The other is air exchange! Basically, if there is too much ventilation in the incubator (i.e. one plug too many pulled out, or the vents too wide open), that causes increased water loss as well.

It all comes down to equilibrium. Dry air wants to pull moisture from wherever it can get it: in the incubator, this is the water pan and the eggs. Incubators have ventilation because the embryos need oxygen, just like all of us do. Ventilation means that drier fresh air flows in, and humid old air exits, such that every "x" number of hours, the air within the incubator is completely exchanged. If this complete exchange occurs too frequently, all those new batches of air end up pulling more and more water from the eggs, and the chicks shrink-wrap.

Drat, I want to go find that thread again--that person explained it much better.

 

[Barrdwing]

Found it! It's not on BYC after all--I just found the link referenced in another thread here. http://cmfarm.us/ventilation.html

 

[kraftyladies]

I woke up this am to 1 pip! Yay! Maybe I did not mess things up after all. It is right on schedule compared to last hatch! I had my first pip early on day 21...then more that evening.. the rest all finishing midday on day 22.

We will see....
Congrats to everyone else that has hatching action.... Pictures please!!

 

[wowmanacat]

Quote:
I had 2 hydrometers in the hatcher. The lowest reading was 70% (the other one would read around 78% at the same time), but would vary somewhere between 70-80 between the 2 hydrometers. When I had the lid open it dropped to 67%. I didn't think that shrink wrapping could occur with that high of a humidity, but that's what they were. ??? There was also a fan in the hatcher, but when I inquired as to whether or not there should be a fan, I was told that it was a good idea. Perhaps though, that contributed to it? The thing that puzzles me though is that there were 7 perfectly hatched chicks with no problems. The 8th chick that hatched (that I had to help) had zipped around half the shell and had sat there for a long time (like 5 hours). All I can think of is that it was my opening the lid that did it, but I just didn't think that having the humidity drop to 67 would hurt. Unfortunately it did. I'll have to calibrate both hydrometers and see what the results are on that. It's really bugging me that 7 hatched perfectly, and knowing that the remaining 14 were fully formed.

I open my lid all the time as they are hatching and I don't have any trouble with them not hatching. Don't beat yourself up over it. Remember how nature works. Only the strong make it.

 

[stitch81]

Quote:
I see. So that sounds like perhaps the fan I had in the incubator (the eggs were in a different tank for incubating, and moved to a larger one for hatching), combined with the fact that I would have to remove the lid to turn the eggs had more to do with the problem. I wanted to get a pc fan, but couldn't locate one and ended up getting a small fan from wal-mart. I'm sure that circulated more air than a pc fan does, so probably contributed to them drying out. I was also doing a dry hatch, humidity in the incubator for the first 18 days was around 35%.

 

[stitch81]

I guess my other question is, how do you determine how often the air in the incubator is being exchanged? With the way my incubator was set up, it's easy to see that there was too much ventilation. The hatcher was designed a bit differently, so there was a lot less ventilation in order to keep the humidity up. Just for the heck of it, I may need to throw in some eggs and use the hatcher to incubate and see what the results are. This has got me really curious now. When I was opening the lid to the hatcher, I had one end weighted down and was prying up one corner and quickly reaching my hand in to grab the chicks. It wasn't open long, and the humidity never dropped below 67%. Going by that article (great info by the way), leads me to believe it was the incubation process that did them in. Which, still my doing, but I don't feel quite so bad now.

 

[stitch81]

Okay, on to the good stuff! Pictures!!

The chick on the far left, and far right are both Rhode Island Reds (the black one surprised me...), the two yellow ones are Buff Orpingtons, the other 2 blackish ones are Barred Rocks, and the little brownish guy second from the left is a Welsummer.

I love this second picture, the one of the left reminds me of a pet hamster I had as a kid, just the angle his head was when the pic was taken.

 

[ChicwannaB]

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wow, you got quite a variety there, they are cute. good job.

 

[ItsAZOO32]

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I had a hatch a month ago that had almost the same thing happen. I thought mine was due to the eggs being shipped. I only had 1 EE hatch out of 13 and only 6 d'uccles out of 11 (I think) that went into lockdown. It seems that they all developed well until lockdown and then nothing. Here is the thread I started about it.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=511136

I think the major consensus was that it was due to shipping because I incubated upright and laid them down to hatch which may have caused the air cells to dislodge or whatever. I still am not sure.

As for this little Orp that is the last one standing from this shipment.. it's day 22 and still nothing

Guess it's not meant to be.

 

[floridachickhatcher]

Im sooo happy right now i just placed an order for 25 Buff Orpington hens and 3 males at Meyer Hatchery ^_^ FINALLY I WILL HAVE MY BEAUTYS'S !! And i will have my own batch of chicks hatched out for them to mingle with ^_^