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!

 

[DwayneNLiz]

purdy babies

 

[Kiki]

 

[Wickedchicken6]

purdy babies

Hi Liz! Thank you.

Hi Kiki!

 

[Wickedchicken6]

Do you guys think the embryos will make it?

 

[Kiki]

I have ZERo experience with hatching. I'm here to learn.

 

[DwayneNLiz]

Do you guys think the embryos will make it?

i'm slightly confused, is one of the eggs holding twins?

 

[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!