First time incubating eggs! In need of advice!

[candira]

Ok this is my first time incubating quail eggs (or any eggs for that matter) but on 9/1 I set 94 Texas A&M quail eggs in my incubator. They started hatching slowly at around 9am yesterday and hatched throughout the night. I knew not to open the incubator bc of losing humidity, but I knew some would need to eat and drink soon, so I took out 18 this morning very quickly. About 40 more hatched out today and I was gonna wait until tomorrow morning to take them out at well, but I stopped by my incubator and discovered one was bleeding badly from the head and all the others were trampling it and seemed to be picking at it, so I decided to go ahead and remove them (quickly as I had before) even though I could see one egg had pipped. I'm not sure what to do with bloody head chick, but I am just waiting for now, but it has been several hours for my pipped egg and although I'm kind of with nature on not helping a chick out of an egg bc it was too weak, I feel like it's my fault this chick hasn't hatched, so should I help??? And if so, what should I do??? I should also note that another chick I hadn't noticed hatched during this time and after removing the 40 chicks my humidity level went right back up to 68%. Anyway, any advice please, I'm not sure what to do, but I want to save this chick!

 

[ChickenGrass]

some people leave the weaker ones
To do there own thing and eventually they would die
They say that if it can't hatch on its own it's too weak to live
But I have helped a few chicks and the all lived to be as strong
As the ones who needed no help.
First of all
The bleeding chick get some cob webs
Or sugar and put it on the wound as it
Forms a scab
And for the chicks that haven't hatched
It can take them up to 24 hours
But if you realy want to help
Get a pin and take of a bit of the shell
To give him/her a head start
When removing the shell don't take off any
Of the inner or outer membrane as that has all the blood vessels
Be very careful doing that because the chick could die if you take that of too
Good luck
And when your taking off shell,take it of from where the
Chick has piped
Here's picture showing where the Membrane is

Hope this helps

 

[candira]

Thank you, I did try to help that chick out as well as a couple more. This morning I found one that had pipped dead in the shell. The problem with the one with the bloody head is its neck is bend back the other direction and it cannot stand. And the ones I have helped out, some can stand up while others cant. But they all seem to have curled feet. I'm not sure why, non of the other 58 chicks that hatched the last couple days had that problem. I'm not sure what the deal is. Does anyone know what may have caused this?

 

[Lozuufy]

Sometimes late hatchers have curled feet, in my experience they usually straighten out by themselves after a couple hours if they are on a grippy enough surface. If they are out of the incubator and their toes haven't straightened out then you could put a towel *without frayed edges*, in the brooder as it is grippy enough that it usually fixes the problem for my quail. The one with the bent neck, is the head flipped upside-down, twisted to the side or ??? Might be wry neck, i had one with wry neck (neck twisted to the side) and he was fine and grew up without a problem except he would sometimes walk in circles by accident.

 

[candira]

Thanks so much for your response. I'm not sure if it's wry neck, he's been in there a while and I want to take him out so he can eat/drink, but I only have 1 brooder and I don't want him getting picked on. I figured he would have died by now. I don't think he has a good chance of making it, but I don't want to kill him. He can't walk at all, he's always just laying on his back or stomach with his legs just stretched out behind him. And on top of the weird neck (which does seem to be much like wry neck based on my Google search), he has a bloody head, and can't get up. I don't know what to do with him! As for the others, I'm hoping they can get their feet straightened out, they don't seem quite as strong as the ones that hatched the couple days before. But I guess things happen one way or the other, I will live and learn!

 

[Lozuufy]

Hope he gets better, sometimes some just aren't strong enough to make it.