Half Shell Hatch-A-Long! (Caution, unsuccessful, please read whole thread before attempting)

[SnapdragonQ]

Thanks. Any idea if I can do anything for #4? I hate seeing them die. I thought when I made it past day 18 they would be in the clear, so to speak.

Just keep going...perhaps it will make it. How is it doing now?

 

[MGG]

Just keep going...perhaps it will make it. How is it doing now?

It seems good, I'll post pics. Would laying the egg down on its side maybe help?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Thanks.
I definitely am all done with this experiment. I just thought it would be amazing to watch it develop instead of just candling. I hate seeing them die though. Egg shells are amazing things. I won't mess with them any more.

Don't beat yourself up. We've all done things that resulted in dead chickens (and other animals) but we learned a lesson (or at least most of us).
At least you didn't slow down the mail and killed thousands of animals.

My thought too. I re-watched the video and it's obvious how far the lab went to keeping the environment sterile right down to sterile gloves and gowns.
MGG, it's possible that no matter how careful you are being, natural environmental bacteria are getting into things. Probably why the pores of eggs are so tiny!

Microscopic pores slathered with the hen's cuticle.

 

[Egg Snatcher]

I'm so sorry @MGG! They were so close. Best wishes sent to you!

 

[MGG]

Should I give it some nutridrench along its bill or anything? I really hope it can make it. It's the lone survivor now.

 

[MGG]

Do you know of anyone here (on BYC) who has done this successfully?
It is a good learning tool for anyone who might try it in the future. Maybe changing the name of the thread to warn anyone considering it, or who finds this thread because of a search...?

How do I change the title? I don't know of anyone unfortunately.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Should I give it some nutridrench along its bill or anything? I really hope it can make it. It's the lone survivor now.

Well I know nutridrench can be absorbed directly through tissue and reach the blood stream without digestion. If you can't get the beak open, which would be preferable, perhaps application on the skin around the mouth may do something.

 

[MGG]

Here are the pictures

 

[MGG]

Well I know nutridrench can be absorbed directly through tissue to the blood stream. If you can't get the beak open, which would be preferable, perhaps application on the skin around the mouth may do something.

That's amazing, I didn't know that. Should I give some to #4 then?

 

[Trisseh]

The yolk on that last one looks hypoxic; they actually pipe O2 directly to them in the experiments like in the video. Not just room air, so it would be interesting to me to see what kind of O2 levels are in the air cell when they pip normally. Lots of things that they do differently but considering students also have completed this successfully with live birds at the end of it, it’s not solely due to sterility in my opinion. You can’t tell me that high school students are equivalent to a biosecure lab.

Even something as simple as the water going into your incubator could pose an issue. They use sterile water and a disinfectant in the cup version, which leaves no room for bacteria to grow in that particular media. And if you read all the way through, they didn’t get great hatch rates even with all of the sterility that they followed.

I think this is a very interesting experiment that gives us a lot of insight into just how complex the incubation process is.

my quail hatch was awful. That entire batch of eggs probably would’ve been better to toss and start over. I’m not sure what happened to them in transit but whatever it was must’ve been bad. all had terrible air cells, had a lot of clears right off the bat, and a ton of early quitters. (These are in an incubator with other, local eggs that are doing well so I don’t think it’s an incubator issue...) so I had 4 hatch, 1 of which I culled the next day because it was spinning like a top on its head, another had severely twisted legs and faded, the third one (ridiculously small white one) passed sometime during the day yesterday, and I’m left with one healthy, noisy little golden Italian chick.