first time for quail 42 out of 77

[veggiecanner]

Not sure if that's great, but now I have some to raise.
Have been collecting eggs for the next incubator load to set in the morning.
took 3 days for hatch this time. Seems to long?

I had a numerical code on the eggs so I could get some idea whose hatched and whose didn't. From this I got some Ideas why they failed. #1 reason was eggs older than 8-9 days. birds were to young to be fertile and I had few deaths in the shell some where around 6 days and a few during hatching it self. as well as 1 pipped the wrong way. 2 others pipped the wrong way but made it through it. I haven't opened them yet but some may have been from the lethal yellow gene.
All in all it was a learning experience.

 

[DoubletakeFarm]

I think that's a good hatch. I had 37/55 hatch and I was tickled pink with that. There's just so many things that can go wrong with incubating, and a lot that is out of your control. I would say get them in the bator sooner though, that would probably help your hatch ratio.


Quote: Do you mean from pip to hatch? My quail took forever to hatch after they pipped. Not at all like chickens. I kept telling my husband "they're all dead, I'm not going to have any quail." But I left them alone and they finally did hatch; almost all at once. Must take them longer to absorb their yolk sack.

Also, I left the stragglers (eggs that weren't hatching) in the incubator WAY longer than what anyone would recommend. I had quite a few more hatch long past when they should have. They started pipping on day 23 (bobs) and I still had some hatch out on day 31.

 

[James the Bald]

I think (just my opinion) that anytime you get a 50%+ hatch rate from shipped eggs that is good. I've read in this forum where some get 95% or better with their own eggs, but seeing that you have some young hens (and roos), the numbers you have are pretty respectable.

I like the idea that you are marking your eggs so you know which egg came from which hen. I was trying to figure out how to do that with 4 hens in a cage... short of keeping a video camera on them all day.

 

[veggiecanner]

No way I am marking for each hen. just the cage.
I have other things to do.
So it would be tricky to do that.

 

[Reedgirl20]

Whenever I see a drop in my hatches I keep track of what pen I collect the eggs from. I have three breeding quads and I have a sharpie marker hanging on the front of the cages. I put a 1,2, or 3 on the eggs at collection and then can see if the hatch is down due to mainly one pen or spread out to all pens. I can then narrow it down from there pretty easy, sometimes having to split out the quads if it looks like most of the infertiles are coming from one pen.

 

[veggiecanner]

If I had not saved eggs for 10 days for this set the average would have been much higher.
Most of the nonstarters were collected on the first 2 days of a 10 day collection.
there seems to be some differences of opinion if eggs are good for 7 or 10 days.
Of course if my place for storing them weren't great that could of caused problems, but the eggs for the 3rd day on did hatch.