Fully developed chicks not hatching

[Izzy_fitzz]

I have always had a good hatch rate in my incubator but I recently put 19 eggs from 3 different trios of silkies. Only 3 hatched and the rest were ALL fertile with fully developed chick inside. At first I thought it was my incubator getting old but I had a broody hen sit on some eggs from the same trios and they all were fully developed but unable to hatch.

Anyone know what whats gone wrong? Could it be the feed they are on?


Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I’ve never experienced this before!

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Well at least that is consistency. Were all the eggs from your breeders or from someone else?

 

[16gauge]

I had a similar experience with the first batch of quail eggs I tried to hatch several years ago.......I think the culprit was that the humidity was too low for the last few days. I now use a hygrometer as well as a thermometer in the incubator.

 

[Tex452]

Too much humidity can cause the eggs to not evaporate enough and the chicks are drowning, that’s what it sounds like to me.
I dry hatch and so far my hatch has been in the 90’s % range, I’m a big believer in dry hatching, I have two batches set now, one is going into lockdown tomorrow night, my humidity has been hanging around the 40% range without adding any water, when the chicks start hatching it jumps to the mid 80’s % range without adding any water, my chicks have no problem hatching and are very lively.

 

[Susan Skylark]

Humidity doesn’t have anything to do with this, the broody and the incubator both had issues with these eggs. Shipping (not an issue here) would be a big cause, but so is trauma or stress of any sort to pre or early incubated eggs: are your eggs over 10 days old at start of incubation, have they been exposed to below 35F or above 78F for several hours, is there an incubator heat spike (again not an issue), are your kids playing catch with the eggs? Nutrition may be a factor as is genetics, but something is causing weak or underdeveloped chicks that can’t hatch or a defect that prevents hatching. Another odd option is really hard egg shells, the chicks just aren’t strong enough to penetrate them, but this tends to be really dark eggs and specific to certain lines. One thing about humidity I will note is a dry dry hatch (20%) really makes the shells brittle so hatching is much easier but so too is accidental breakage! Are you doing a necropsy on your unhatched eggs? Sometimes you don’t see any thing but a high prevalence of deformed or underdeveloped chicks can give you a clue that something is wrong. Could you get some eggs from a friend or from different birds and do a trial hatch, if that goes well it would narrow it down to something in your genetics or nutrition (assuming eggs are treated the same preincubation).

 

[Tex452]

Humidity doesn’t have anything to do with this, the broody and the incubator both had issues with these eggs. Shipping (not an issue here) would be a big cause, but so is trauma or stress of any sort to pre or early incubated eggs: are your eggs over 10 days old at start of incubation, have they been exposed to below 35F or above 78F for several hours, is there an incubator heat spike (again not an issue), are your kids playing catch with the eggs? Nutrition may be a factor as is genetics, but something is causing weak or underdeveloped chicks that can’t hatch or a defect that prevents hatching. Another odd option is really hard egg shells, the chicks just aren’t strong enough to penetrate them, but this tends to be really dark eggs and specific to certain lines. One thing about humidity I will note is a dry dry hatch (20%) really makes the shells brittle so hatching is much easier but so too is accidental breakage! Are you doing a necropsy on your unhatched eggs? Sometimes you don’t see any thing but a high prevalence of deformed or underdeveloped chicks can give you a clue that something is wrong. Could you get some eggs from a friend or from different birds and do a trial hatch, if that goes well it would narrow it down to something in your genetics or nutrition (assuming eggs are treated the same preincubation).

I disagree, humidity has a lot to do with it, if the chicks are developing and not hatching, not enough is evaporated out of the egg, they are drowning, if I understood the OP correctly, they were fully developed, just like my cousins and my sons were.
In a high humidity area where I live, if I would do recommended humidity I would have very few hatch.
I would definitely try dry hatching.