Five Tough Chicks and TWO Amazing Embryos!

[Wickedchicken6]

For those who may be familiar with me on here...I can be somewhat unorthodox in my methods. Ok, ok...I'm just plain extreme in my methods.

The following is one of these...

Last Saturday at 2pm, I gathered the eggs my fleet of broody hens had been setting on. The eggs sat out in the sun and wind until I brought them in the house at supper time. I candled the eggs at 2am Sunday and discovered the marked eggs were ready to hatch and one chick had internally pipped. I placed the eggs I sorted through in the incubator.

Sunday night I candled and saw three had internally pipped. Three Old English Game Bantam chicks have hatched and a forth is pipping. Those eggs sat 12 hours at the point of hatching with no heat and the chicks are hatching fine with no assistance from me.

Even more unbelievable is the embryo I candled tonight.

I didn't candle right to the bottom of the pails knowing there may have been developing eggs. I've had an extremely broody hen who hatched keets. I left her with one keet...but she decided she needed to claim a new nest AND set in addition to raising the keet. She fought to sit on this nest with an OEGB for about a week. I wasn't wanting more "unplanned" oegbs chicks at the moment but I candled the rest of the eggs last night because it's been bothering me. Five eggs were worthy of setting. (4 oegb and 1 EE) I marked them with a blue stripe length wise around the egg.

I candled the eggs tonight. Three oegb eggs are dead and the forth EE egg...I can't see into it.
One oegb embryo is alive and moving!

(My camera doesn't like candling pics. At least you can see a dark spot. It does move.)

I'm not sure the embryo will make it to the end of development after being cold for 60 hours. We'll see.

But I wanted to share this information to show how resilient chicks and embryos can be. I'll keep this updated as long as the embryo survives or until a chick hatches.

 

[Wickedchicken6]

Update: The remaining two eggs required a bit of help. The membrane dried during the pipping stage and the chicks were stuck. I needed to wet the membrane with a Q-tip to allow them to finish hatching.

Both chicks are out now. The one chick appears weak...the other appears to be fine.
All five chicks survived 12 hours cold; first being left outside in the sun and wind for the afternoon and then in the house in pails for before adding them to the incubator.

I'm hope this can help other hatchers by showing how incredibly resilient embryos are, even at the point of hatching...if they happen to go cold for a length of time.

 

[Wickedchicken6]

Good morning Thursday!

All five chicks are fine and moved into the brooder. The weak looking one needed time to rest in the incubator. They are eating and drinking well. There's two girls for sure...with a possibility of four. (I think)

The one embryo...scratch THAT...the "TWO" embryos are still alive and well.
There was another egg from the 20 *60 hour group!
I had considered that embryo might be dead.
And then missed it under the thermometer. But no more.
Both embryos have strong movement.

*Edited to correct that it was 60 hours, not 20 hours. Gee that's bad when I can't get my own post correct!

 

[Wickedchicken6]

I cleaned the coop and took all the eggs from all the broody hens, Saturday afternoon

The five chicks were at point of hatch (one was internally pipped) and I left them for 12 hours without incubation. I then candled, and put them in the incubator. All five hatched. That's the first part.

The second part is...

The two embryos, each in it's own egg...were collected at the same time. I didn't candle these eggs. They sat in the house until Tuesday approx. 2 am. I candled them and saw there had been an embryo developing. So I put 5 marked eggs in the incubator figuring they'd be dead. All had been sat on for about a week. I thought...what are the chance they'd be alive?

When I candled, three embryos were dead.

Two embryos were still alive!

They sat cold in a pail of eggs for 60 hours. Saturday 2pm-Tuesday 2am

They are still alive, moving and developing. 60 hours!

 

[Wickedchicken6]

@JaeG It's funny, when I do see brown eggs in grocery stores here, because they're clearly being marketed towards the health conscious folks. The prices are usually quite high. White eggs are cheap and plentiful. All the misconceptions about color crack me up. People have some crazy questions and theories about the blue and green eggs especially.

I'm nearing the end of my hatch over here. Of course the last few eggs are giving me drama. One of the Ancona X eggs has a pip in a less than ideal place and through a vein. Fingers crossed. Uggghhhh.

This brings me back to the subject of experimenting. These Ancona X eggs were freebies, mostly because they were a few days older than what the breeder would normally sell. Plus they were also the product of an experimental pairing. I like to throw in older eggs on occasion and I've had plenty of success AND drama.

@Wickedchicken6 Got any old egg experience? I have a feeling you've tried some things. Lol. Longest period from collection to incubation? I'm over here with my trying to keep my hands out of my own incubator. Sheeesh.

How did you know???
I've got old egg, no turning eggs and more cold egg experience!
Most of it is buried within other threads on here...lol.

In 2015, I started with old eggs. REALLY old eggs. I've been modest in saying they were 3+ weeks...but it just occurred to me last night that I could figure out the dates with the digital tags of the pictures. So I did.

Blue June 15th: Our grand MIL's funeral. We picked our chickens up after the funeral.
Red June 28th: Our chickens were predated one day short of two weeks
Pink August 19th: The first pic of those three chicks hatched from the old eggs was taken August 20...so August 19 for hatching.
July29: The eggs hatched would've been set approx. July 29.
That would mean the hatched eggs were at least 4 weeks old.
(Why didn't I figure this out sooner?)

In the two weeks we had the chickens, I left all the eggs hoping they'd start setting...lol. Those eggs laid there, untouched. They didn't get handled or turned until I put them in the incubator.

I didn't start building my incubator until the 3 week point...lol. There were a couple pails of eggs so I stuffed the incubator full. Then as soon as it was apparent eggs weren't developing, I refilled those empty spots. The eggs were silkie cross, OEGB and a brown egg layer so the shells were easier for a newbie to see into.

This was my first try/experience with hatching. I didn't have any calibrated thermometers or hygrometers. Basically, I was winging it to the best of my abilities.
I think luck MUST have been on my side.

The two white chicks (two Silkie crosses) and the gray chick on the right side are the chicks I resurrected.

We were left with two hens; an EE and an OEGB and three roosters that were moved to a secure enclosure. Once they started laying again I also incubated their eggs. Those are the other chicks in the pic above.

I still have all three, all are conformationally correct and haven't had any health related issues to date.

Babygirl is one of my smallest hens. She takes no guff and is a top row hen...lol.
She's a total sweetheart and one of my favorites. (Pic taken tonight)

The gray chick turned into the gray hen who lays an aqua colored egg.

The white feathered leg chick turned out to be the white Silkied Rooster above.

 

[DwayneNLiz]

purdy babies

 

[WVduckchick]

Popcorn for everyone!

The coolest eggs I ever hatched and candled were Polish! Clear as a bell, this is my favorite candling photo I've ever taken


And watching them zip was cool too, because they cut a wide zip and I could actually watch them turn before each smack of the shell.

My duck eggs are usually pretty clear to candle also!

But back to the subject of crazy eggs... I have lavender orpingtons at my farm about an hour from my house. I've had a crazy broody for a while, she steals eggs and moves from nest to nest. But I wanted to incubate some eggs, so I wasn't sure if any of the ones I brought home had been sat on or not (I can't separate her, long story). I set some the evening of June 9th, a Friday. Got home from work yesterday (Wednesday) and already had a pip, and it hatched a few hours later. So apparently she had "pre-heated" that one!

Also, same hen had been sitting on eggs for 3 weeks. When I checked on her, she had killed 3 hatchlings. So I took the remaining 4 eggs, travelled an hour home with them, candled and 1 had an internal pip, 1 had previously quit, 2 looked to be a few days behind, but still good development. I put the 3 good ones in the incubator and they all hatched!

 

[Wickedchicken6]

Update: All the embryos, including the 60 hour eggs are still alive and developing.

I'm keeping the added water in; two oegb eggs appear to have drawn down.

The pipping chick hatched about 14 hours ago (Fri. 4am)

Two pics: the large fowl chick out and the much cuter dry LF chick with the oegbs, just taken.

 

[Wickedchicken6]

That's good info. I imagine there are lots of eggs that could've hatched successfully if given the chance after being exposed to less than ideal conditions. I didn't expect that mine were viable, but I'm so darn nosey! I always eggtopsy quitters, so I candled to make sure they had expired before cracking them open. To my surprise they were very much alive!

I've read accounts of people incubating store bought fertilized eggs that have been refrigerated. I can see how that works as long as they don't freeze entirely. The surprising part is that they aren't treated like hatching eggs and still manage to hatch. They just sit there in the carton without being turned, very low humidity, etc. Of course, the hatch rate isn't usually good and a higher rate of deformities have been noted. I'm still impressed. Lol.

But that's how one finds stuff out right? I don't do eggtopsies all the time but I do them quite often. I've read of refrigerated eggs hatching as well.

ummm @KikisGirls the balut is usually a day 23ish duck



i actually work with a guy that has a philippino wife and SHE wont even touch it

Balut is not my forte...lol.

Wow, what strong little babies. I heard in a book that someone threw some eggs on a compost pile and it was so warm that three weeks later a bunch of baby chicks came out of the compost. Talk about being surprised!

That would surprise me too!

i think that @casportpony was incubating eggs for a few days -changed her mind took them out, left them on the counter for a few days then changed her mind and put them back in and still had a good hatch rate

but i could be remembering it wrong too

Perhaps if she sees this she can add her experience @casportpony
If it's someone else...it's all good. Heck, I reread my first posts on here and I didn't get my own post correct. I had to go back and edit but I used strike-through and left my mistake in. (It's not 20 hours...it's 60 hours) Sheesh!
(In my defense, I'd been up about 26 hours when I wrote that...lol)

 

[Wickedchicken6]

Speaking of which, I just candled the 60 hour and 12 hour eggs.
All are still alive and looking good.
Two large fowl have internally pipped and the one chick is working away at the external pip. So I added water.

I'm looking at incubation charts. I think the 12 hour cold OEGB eggs look about Day16. The 2 - 60 hour eggs looked close to day 9 when I posted the blurry pic of the one egg...but they don't look like day 16 yet. I failed to consider how fast this was going to happen with the week (approx.) the broodies may have been already setting...lol!

Hopefully all goes well.
I can't say as well as planned because nothing was planned.