First Hatch Issues

[3forfree]

My first attempt at incubating wasn't a complete disaster, I got five of twelve. I opened the ones that didn't hatch and found one that looked like it was fully developed, the rest were in different stages of development.most were "shrink wrapped" I think is the term that's used here. What causes this shrink wrapping to some, and not the others? I hand turned the eggs until lockdown 3x daily, keep the humidity pretty constant until the last week. These were pheasant eggs, and didn't have anything to candle with, I had one duck egg that showed growth early, and kept it until the pheasants hatched on monday, broke it open today and it had started to develope, but never finished. I'm going to clean the bator and put 36 pheasant eggs into it tonight.

 

[chicmom]

I'm pretty sure shrink wrapping is due to a lack of sufficient humidity....do you know what your humidity levels were throughout the process?

 

[3forfree]

I didn't keep any records maybe next time I will.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have not done pheasants or ducks, so I cannot give you any advice from experience.

How long pheasant eggs and duck eggs take to incubate depends on the variety. Hopefully you knew how long incubation should have taken for the varieties of pheasants and the duck you had. You probably did, but I'l just mention it. It could explain a couple of things.

Since you did open your unhatched eggs to analyze them, you might look through these articles to help interpret your results. Shrink wrap does usually mean low humidity, but why some and not others, especially in different stagesof development, I don't know. Unless maybe they were different varieties in different stages of developmet at the same time?

Mississippi State Incubation Troubleshooting
http://www.poultry.msstate.edu/extension/pdf/troubleshooting_incubation.pdf

Florida Incubation Troubleshooting
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/aa204

Five of twelve on your first hatch is not all that bad. Since you are trying to figure out what happened, you will probably do much better next time. I was quite happy with 17 out of 27 chicken eggs my first time, know a couple of things I need to change, and sure hope to do better next time.

 

[TOL Chick]

great info on what went wrong with a hatch - thanks for sharing!

 

[3forfree]

RIDGERUNNER,
Thanks for the info, I will store it for future use.