GQF 1502 Staggered hatches??

[mschoening]

Hi All!

I recently purchased a GQF 1502 cabinet incubator. My intentions are to stagger hatch guinea eggs for now. My development rate is great, but when hatch time comes along; I'm having quite a few keets getting stuck in the egg and dying. I'm only a few hatches in and don't know how to fix the issue. My last hatch, I had 8 either pip and not make it(shrink wrapped) or no piping at all and died in the egg. That was out of 30 eggs set. I guess my humidity is dropping off and they are shrink wrapping. My second hatch, I used a Styrofoam incubator as the hatcher with higher humidity during lock down and the same thing happened with 5 eggs. How do I fix this from happening so much or is that just part of it doing staggered hatching?

 

[R2elk]

Hi All!

I recently purchased a GQF 1502 cabinet incubator. My intentions are to stagger hatch guinea eggs for now. My development rate is great, but when hatch time comes along; I'm having quite a few keets getting stuck in the egg and dying. I'm only a few hatches in and don't know how to fix the issue. My last hatch, I had 8 either pip and not make it(shrink wrapped) or no piping at all and died in the egg. That was out of 30 eggs set. I guess my humidity is dropping off and they are shrink wrapping. My second hatch, I used a Styrofoam incubator as the hatcher with higher humidity during lock down and the same thing happened with 5 eggs. How do I fix this from happening so much or is that just part of it doing staggered hatching?

Do the hatching in a separate incubator/hatcher. Add the eggs to the incubator on a weekly basis and move them to the hatcher on a weekly basis. A still air incubator may work best as a hatcher since there is no blowing air to help dry out the eggs once they are pipped.

Calibrate your hygrometer so you are sure what the actual humidity is. Dying in shell without pipping can be due to a number of reasons but one of those reasons is running too high of humidity during the incubation phase which will prevent enough moisture loss to have an adequately sized air cell for the hatch.

 

[mschoening]

Thank you for the response!

I will try that. I'll disconnect the fan in my secondary hatcher. I have a batch that is going in lock down this evening. I'm running my humidity between 50-55% during incubation and hatch in the cabinet incubator. I don't want to bump the humidity up to much, in fear of effecting the eggs that are developing. The more I have been researching, I may drop the humidity down and try more of a dry hatch and use my secondary hatcher with higher humidity for lock down.

I have checked air cells and and all seem good and uniform on all of the eggs. I candle them before I put them into lock down. I'm at a loss. Aggravating.

 

[R2elk]

Thank you for the response!

I will try that. I'll disconnect the fan in my secondary hatcher. I have a batch that is going in lock down this evening. I'm running my humidity between 50-55% during incubation and hatch in the cabinet incubator. I don't want to bump the humidity up to much, in fear of effecting the eggs that are developing. The more I have been researching, I may drop the humidity down and try more of a dry hatch and use my secondary hatcher with higher humidity for lock down.

I have checked air cells and and all seem good and uniform on all of the eggs. I candle them before I put them into lock down. I'm at a loss. Aggravating.

The air cells may and should be uniform but that does not mean they are losing enough moisture. I try to run my incubator at 30% to 35% humidity during incubation. It works well for me.

Shrink wrapping occurs when the humidity is too low during lockdown especially if there is too long a period from pip too zipping. It is not caused by too low of humidity during the incubation phase.

Good luck.

 

[Mosey2003]

Bump the humidity down in 5% increments during incubation (not hatch) and see how you do. I had been running 60-65% as someone experienced recommended and that was the issue I kept having - they'd make it to hatch day and part would die then and then part would die after pipping. I do 50-55% now and it's much better. Your reading could be a bit off, or your particular area could just need 40-45%.

 

[mschoening]

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[mdees88]

Staggered hatches are not ideal when using only 1 incubator. I've done them with "decent" results but I've definitely had more shrink wrap and splayed legs than traditional hatches.

Did you open the door to remove chick's before all of the chick's hatched (while some were pipped)? Most of the shrink wrapping I've experienced happened after I pulled out the first chick's that hatched.

I'm testing this now. I have 140 pheasants in my incubator and the first one hatched yesterday at 10am. My humidity is 70-75% and I'm not opening the incubator until tomorrow afternoon (50 hours). This will give time for the majority of the pipped eggs to zip before the humidity drops from opening the door.

We'll see how it goes......

 

[mschoening]

I had a hatch on Sunday into Monday. 46 eggs. I went ahead and set them in the hatching tray in the 1502. All was going well and 27 hatched while in the mid to low 50's on humidity. Sunday afternoon I went and checked the progress. I noticed a keet was hatched but the bottom half of shell was dried to it's back. At that point I plugged the styrofoam incubator in and put the remaining eggs in. I got the humidity up to 80%. They were all pipped when I put them in. A few ended up needing some assistance but overall 44 hatched and are healthy!

 

[mill-j]

I stagger batches in my GQF 1502 all the time. Chickens don't have as many problems with this as turkeys. I've only hatched several guineas but they seemed to hatch fine.

The trick is getting your batches on a schedule, and it works best if your hatching all chickens or all turkeys, etc. For example: if you put a batch of chicken eggs in a week apart, the other batches will experience only about 3 days of high humidity and if you can effectively drop the humidity after a batch hatches, it should be fine.

This year I've been staggering a lot of small batches of turkey, chicken, bantam, and my hatch rates drop the closer the batches are set because there is not enough time between hatches to drop the humidity.

 

[mschoening]

I'm hatching all Guinea eggs right now. I have them staggered to hatch a approximately a week apart. I was just a little scared to bump the humidity up. I don't think it would effect the embryo's that are further along, but the eggs I just set may be. They may go through a few hatches of high humidity before it is their turn. Would that be an issue with development? I would do a test on my own; but Guineas only lay for so long and I don't want to ruin any.