First attepted incubator hatch has gone wrong. Any advice or pointers??

[RandomWarrens]

OK

Home made incubator in a cooler box - consisting of 12v supply, Velman thermostat kit 12v headlamp bulb, computer fan assisted with turner using a glitterball motor. (I'm an electronics engineer by profession, so all this works perfectly (honest) )

Temp/Humidity targets
99Deg F / 40% Day 1-18,
94Deg F / 50-60% day 18 onwards
Accuracy has been within two and a half degrees (going to try to improve this accuracy before any future attempts)


Day 1, start with 8 eggs - 5 Milfleur Pekin, 3 Gold Partridge pekin turning every 1/2 hour for a few seconds
Day 8, first candle - things developing well. 3 eggs discarded due to 1x blood ring, 1x posibly infertile, 1 big bloodspot
Day 15, second candle - development off remaining 5 fine - eggs mostly black mass with air sacs in top,
Day 17, Really cold night - bulb blown somewhere between 8PM and 7AM, temps have dropped to 67F. Replace bulb and continue.
Day 18, stopped turning.
Day 21, no visible holes in eggs, but some peeping heard
Day 22, still nothing broken out
Day 23
Day 24 Nope - Nothing
Day 25 Assuming all is lost. Candle eggs and try to float in warm water. No movement, no sound.

Eggtopsy of the first of 5 eggs reveals a large fully formed and feathered chick with nothing visibly wrong. I'm pretty sure all 5 have now suffered late death. Nothing is moving in any egg

Any thoughts on what can cause this kind of late death? I'm gutted it went wrong after so much planning and effort, and feel a little guilty about getting them so far but falling at the last hurdle.

Its almost like they have not been strong enough or had sufficient energy to break out from the egg, what could cause this?

 

[tec27]

Im not a fan of the humidity that high during the first 18 days. Mine is usually around 20-30%. Temps seems good

94 degrees is low for the last couple days. Need to keep it at 99-101. And the humidity should be higher than 50. Preferably 60-70.

Chicks could have been too weak to break out. This could be from the incubation itself or genetic/nutritional defects.

I would perfect the incubation after lockdown.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I'm an automation engineer and industrial electrician. I built a Cadillac of an incubator and hatcher so I feel you.
If it is forced air, I'd look toward oxygen.
There could be other things too, like breeder nutrition, age, daylength.
Not to worry, you'll get it figured out.

 

[chickydee64]

I'm an automation engineer and industrial electrician. I built a Cadillac of an incubator and hatcher so I feel you.
If it is forced air, I'd look toward oxygen.
There could be other things too, like breeder nutrition, age, daylength.
Not to worry, you'll get it figured out.

Hi,
Sorry this went bad for you...............
The high humidity the first 18 days could be a problem.
I do dry hatch and have had much better results since doing this.
I also run about 30/35 humidity until lockdown then 60/65.
You can find dry hatch in search......you may want to read this and see if it fits for you.
Good Luck...................

 

[RandomWarrens]

Appreciate all the pointers - thank you

I'm going for lower humidity next hatch attempt up to Day 18 based on your suggestions. I'm also going to improve the ventilation - always a compromise as more ventilation is likely to make temerature/humidity less controllable. Currently I have 2x 1/4 inch holes which bring fresh air in.

I also probably need to much be stricter with my lockdown as the checking of eggs and adding water etc might have been where I went wrong. Potentially I'm thinking I may have brought in infection or caused too much temp/humidity change.

I'm also experimenting with nichrome wire for the heater and dedicated LEDs for lighting..... Not keen on filament bulbs due to the impure heat energy produced and tendency to fail which bit me last time. More experimentation and fettling coming up, I will be making sure that my incubator is super accurate and easy to control before I retry....

Cheers - Dan

 

[3 NH reds]

X2 on the humidity. I had a bad hatch with mushy chicks with a Humidity of 40-55%. This hatch I have now was a dry hatch of around 20-26% and then 64% on day 18-21 , the Numbers went up and no sick mushy chicks dropping out in the first 48 hours.

 

[seventreesfarm]

What about humidity on shipped eggs with wonky air cells?

 

[RandomWarrens]

What about humidity on shipped eggs with wonky air cells?

I see where you are coming from - but I picked the eggs came from a locally breeder and met the parents. I was pretty careful with my handling and they had been kept pointy end down throughout storage and incubation. I'm hoping that I can put this in the category of "things I did right" ;-)

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I weigh the eggs when I collect them and twice during incubation to check how much water they're losing as a humidity guide.

 

[Amykins]

How long were the eggs at that low temp? On other threads veteran hatchers say that they can only survive for an hour or so at such a low temperature. :/ Also I'm worried, is 40% humidity really that high? For my ducks, every site I've found says to keep it at 50%, even higher during lockdown so that's what I've been keeping them at.