Fully Developed Chicks Dead In Shell?

[hannahsocal]

Hello there! I’ve been incubating eggs for years with broody hens and got a new mechanical incubator last year. It worked perfectly fine for the past 10 hatches I did but this hatch I did a mix of Silkie eggs and other large fowl breeds. The LF breeds pipped, zipped, and hatched before the silkies, and as the last LF egg zipped, the first Silkie egg started to pip. I had 8 Silkie eggs in the incubator and 3 pipped but died along the way, so they must have been okay to start pipping right? The others were fully formed also but just died in the shell. What would cause ALL of the silkie chicks to die in the shell on hatch day?? They looked perfectly healthy when I opened them up to do an egg-topsy and had no malformations. I removed all of the LF chicks when they hatched to reduce the bacterial contamination to the other eggs too. Not sure what could have happened here, it sucks! I really wanted silkies!
Here’s a picture of one of the silkies that died halfway through its zipping.

Does anyone know what might have happened??

 

[JacinLarkwell]

My guess is something internal. Are the silkies from your birds?

 

[hannahsocal]

My guess is something internal. Are the silkies from your birds?

Yep

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Yep

Where did the parents come from? What do you feed them?

 

[hannahsocal]

Where did the parents come from? What do you feed them?

Parents came from 2 different Silkie breeders. I feed them the same feed as my other hens whose eggs are hatching well

 

[BarnyardChaos]

It's not an answer and probably no consolation, but I've heard that Silkies are notoriously delicate to hatch.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

It's not an answer and probably no consolation, but I've heard that Silkies are notoriously delicate to hatch.

Mine have had about a 50-75% hatch rate with broodies. Only lower one is Cornish bantams, which I've realized I just can't have broodies hatch. Never hatched them in an incubator though

 

[hannahsocal]

Mine have had about a 50-75% hatch rate with broodies. Only lower one is Cornish bantams, which I've realized I just can't have broodies hatch. Never hatched them in an incubator though

Why don’t you let broodies hatch Cornish bantams?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Why don’t you let broodies hatch Cornish bantams?

For whatever reason, they just don't make it. Out of dozens, I think I ended up with 2 that survived being with broodies. They just do far, far better when raised artificially.