Hands on hatching and help

[AmyLynn2374]

Ok thanks that's really reassuring. I'll leave them all in unless I smell or see a leak. I think I'm just to new at this. I for sure see the healthy ones moving but then their are others that look like their veining? I think. Could be behind a little or it died during shipping since they are shipped eggs. I've watched so many youtube videos but most my eggs are chocolate brown or dark green.

. Guess only time will tell..

Dark browns and greens are a pain in the butt to be able to make a good assumption on.

He or she is here! I didn't have to assise ether! It went from not doing anything to hatch to hatched in about 10 mins! It actually hatched about 4 mins before another! Thank you so much everyone! Here is a picture of the one I was worried about right after it hatched and a picture of it cuddling with the one it hatched right before in the incubator in my "drying area" lol I don't let them run around free in the incubator for fear of them knocking into the other eggs that have piped already. I have 5 chicks so far since midnight this morning!

That's great!!

well, that leads me to a shrink wrap/sticky chicken question. if the inner membrane is starting to close in around the chick--as in the outer membrane is still attached to the shell, and you can see the inner membrane wrapped around the chick instead of attached to the outer membrane, and the inner membrane is still veiny, clear, and pliable, is that ok? in other words, as long as the chick can slide along the inner membrane and the feathers aren't sticking, is it ok if the membrane is encasing the chick instead of sticking to the side of the egg? is that what the inner membrane is supposed to do as everything dries up?

And this is what I was talking about. The outter membrane should be nice and papery white. That membrane lines the shell...BUT the inner membrane hugs the chick. That is 100% normal. I think a lot of people see this and freak out thinking that it is shrinkwrapping the chick because what do you hear on here the most...shrink wrap shrink wrap shrink wrap. And I will argue this until the day I die. Chicks do not shrink wrap that easily. Shrink wrapping is when all moisture of the membrane is gone and the membrane pulls taunt against the chick. It will literally pull the chick down with it as it shrinks. Think about untreated leather when it gets wet. As the leather dries it shrinks up becomes tight. This doesn't happen in a matter of minutes. It takes a while for this to happen. A chick that has pipped has a greater chance of the membrane that is exposed drying and gluing itself to the chick at the area of exposure. Now a chick with a normal pip in an incubator with adequate humidity can be pipped for 24 hours w/out drying out to a point it will cause complications. The more membrane that is exposed, the longer it is allowed to be exposed the greater the risk. My number one reason I wait till 18 hours to make a pip hole bigger, because once I do, that membrane has more exposure and greater risk to drying out. If at any time be it 6 hours or 16 I see an outter membrane turning brownish/yellow, (the sign that it is drying out.) I will pull it out moisten the membrane and check the inner membrane to make sure it is not adhering to the chick. I have started to prefer using neosporin on exposed membranes cause it does so well keeping them moist. Even in an incubator with high humidity (I think more so with forced air), if you have a large amount of membrane exposed-even if you do not open the bator, it can still start drying out.

I have NEVER had a pipper or zipper shrink wrap (not saying it never happens, mind you,) and I am constantly in the bator during hatch as I pull my hatchers as they become active and take out shells and flip over pippers that have been knocked.

My shrink wrap occurances have happened after lockdown- normally at draw down and before it can pip. I have had at least one that was able to internally pip, but was shrinkwrapped and could not progress past there. It is my belief most true shrink wrapping happens from either too much moisture loss over incubation causing the membranes to dry too much or at draw down when draw down is extreme. I am going to post pics of shrink wrapping so you can see exactly what I am saying. So here's my spoiler alert.

I will put them in a seperate post so if anyone doesn't want to see it, here's your warning.

i think this actually makes it pretty clear ha! you can see the white membrane still stuck to the shell, but the inner membrane is rubbing against the chick's beak. this chick has been just picking away at the shell instead of zipping. it's been pipped for 22 hours. the problem is that there are still veins in that inner membrane. i'm a little concerned that the membrane is closing in around it, but i am not going to touch that membrane with the veins out like that.

As long as there are prominent veins, there's not much you can do. That looks perfectly normal to me. I see absolutely no signs of shrink wrapping. (Just remember any time people give advice from a picture, you are the one up close and personally, so your judging is more important than ours.)

 

[thebulg]

Quote: i am actually fully on board with your thought process!! it makes so much more sense to me that the membrane containing all of their blood vessels would stay close to their body. and the few dead chicks i've pulled late in the hatch, all of them came out with the inner membrane well attached to them. and it also makes a lot of sense to me that if the feathers aren't sticking, if it's still stretchy, etc, the chick should be strong enough to move it. this is not necessarily making me feel better about my overall hatch, but once i got my wits about me this morning i kept thinking that at this point, really the only important thing is making sure the membrane stays pliable. well, and that it's warm and there is available oxygen. but this makes a LOT of sense. if the chick isn't visibly sticking to the membrane in such a way that the chick can't move or is being pulled, if the chick is peeping, breathing, membrane is stretchy and clear, let it be?

 

[AmyLynn2374]

Picture alert!! Shrink wrapped pics and after death pics!!
​

These are the first two shrink wrapped chicks I had in 2014. Notice how tight the membrane is and how it has the chick pulled down to the bottom half of the shell.





This is the one that I dound had internally pipped.


You can see the beak managed to pierce the inner membrane.


These are from the first hatch this year. Again you can see the outer membrane adhered to the shell and the inner membrane has turned as white as the outter membrane and is drawing the chick against the shell





Now, in contrast, this is a chick surrounded by the inner membrane that is NOT shrinkwrapped. As a matter of fact this egg did not loose enough moisture and the chick drowned in the excess moisture. (One of the jumbo green eggs I was dumb enough to stick in with the tiny silkie eggs that needed a higher humidity rate. See, even some what experienced hatchers make bad calls sometimes, even when we know it.)






There is absolutely no shrink wrapping going on here. But to someone that has been preached to about shrink wrapping, seeing the membrane encase the chick like this can be downright frightening,
Had this chick not pipped in the bottom of the shell where all the fluid was or was able to pip all the way through the shell, it would have had a chance to hatch, because the membrane is pliable and moist. (Too moist in this case.)

 

[AmyLynn2374]

i am actually fully on board with your thought process!! it makes so much more sense to me that the membrane containing all of their blood vessels would stay close to their body. and the few dead chicks i've pulled late in the hatch, all of them came out with the inner membrane well attached to them. and it also makes a lot of sense to me that if the feathers aren't sticking, if it's still stretchy, etc, the chick should be strong enough to move it. this is not necessarily making me feel better about my overall hatch, but once i got my wits about me this morning i kept thinking that at this point, really the only important thing is making sure the membrane stays pliable. well, and that it's warm and there is available oxygen. but this makes a LOT of sense. if the chick isn't visibly sticking to the membrane in such a way that the chick can't move or is being pulled, if the chick is peeping, breathing, membrane is stretchy and clear, let it be?

That is my philosophy. Until it's been 24 hours and then I get antsy and start an assist only to find there's usually nothing wrong and it still has veining and that's why it hasn't progressed on it's own...lol Then I have to put it back and wait anyway....

 

[thebulg]

i wish more people would post things like that! i love this site so much, and thank you SO MUCH.

as a side note, it's been 23 hours since the first external pip and about 19 since i made the safety hole in the other 2 eggs, and currently everyone is exactly as they were this morning, if not better. veins are receding really slowly, which i read was to be expected, but everyone is chirping, breathing, moving their beaks in and out, "fluttering", etc. membranes are all still very pliable. it's really uncomfortable watching the hatch this way because it's "wrong", and i keep thinking someone is about to die, but i am starting to be hopeful. 24 hours stable seems like a really good sign to me.

 

[SilkiesForEver]

I need some help from hatching experts.

I have been trying to hatch eggs from my own Rosecomb bantam pens since the beginning of the year, but absolutely no luck. I've mentioned it on this thread a little while ago, but I am still not getting any chicks.

I did an egg-topsy on my most recent attempt, and found that (as always) they all seemed to die between day 17-20. And two out of the four chicks pipped internally, but never externally. There were no visible problems with the chicks themselves. I kept the humidity between 50-60 in the beginning, as I usually do, but lowered it after a few months when I learned from a breeder that Rosecombs do better with lower humidity.

 

[AmyLynn2374]

BYC is a wonderful community with lots of knowledge and experience out there to absorb...however, all the horror stories of people having problems and chicks dying at pip or zip scares the beejeezus out of us, add to that the fear mongering past from generation to generation of hatchers of how you will certainly compromise your hatch if you open the bator, and how "easy" it is to shrink wrap a chick, it makes us paranoid of loosing one and we sometimes act prematurely. I am just as guilty. Probably the majority of chicks that I start an assist with at 24 hours and have to stop because the veining isn't completely retracted would have hatched just fine without my intervention to begin with. With that being said, I know when to stop and leave well enough alone, so I will feed into my interefering since it gives me the assurance that all is well. As long as they are all hatching out healthy with out problems, I don't see me changing my methods. I also know that there are certain ones that would have undoubtedly have died without the assistance.

You listen, you accept advice, sometimes other's advice will save you a lot of trouble, sometimes you listen to someone and go wth??? NO. And you do what your intuition tells you. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, no matter what you do is going to change the outcome. You can either dwell on the what ifs and drive yourself crazy...I think we've all been there at some point, or you can see the learning experience, feel sad, but grow from that point and take that knowledge with you to the next hatch. We are essentially playing God when we decide to artificially incubate, only we are not God perfect and we are going to screw up. Incubating is being able to deal with the fact that we are going to screw up or that we can't save them all and dealing with that. Not saying we can't or shouldn't feel bad, I've delt with my own times of guilt, but that we have to accept our limitations if we are going to continue to incubate and find joy in those that we successfully see into this world.

Up until this last hatch I could honestly say I had never lost a pipper/zipper during hatch. In my green egg hatch this last go round I had a malpositioned pipper, that pipped into the pointed end. I gave it the 18 hours before making the pip hole bigger. Upon extending it I could see that the yolk sack was very big and unabsorbed so I moistened the membranes and replaced it thinking that by the next morning it would at least be partially absorbed. Next morning- it was still the same. I started giving the chick electrolyte enhanced water from a q-tip and keeping the membranes moist, another 24 hours and no change. Chick was peeping more active, but the yolk was just not absorbing. I had errands to run and when I came back the poor thing had manage to somehow rupture the yolk, (I'm still wondering if the extended pip hole didn't allow the yolk to become too dried, even though I was trying to keep it moist with water on the q-tip, and thus the reason it ruptured while still fully encased in the shell.) The chick at this point was gasping on the ruptured yolk contents. With nothing to loose I finished the assist, tied off the yolk and replaced it to the bator on a damp paper towel. (I will hold on to even the slightest bit of hope..yeah, I'm that bleeding heart hatcher.) Of course, it didn't make it.

The main point is to remember when you are asking for advice, not everyone should be giving advice. If something sounds wonky, it probably is. Trust your gut instinct. Ask for experiences of these people to back their advice if it doesn't sound right. Just because a person has done a thousand hatches doesn't make them all knowing and just because someone has done only a dozen hatches doesn't mean they have nothing to give, (especially if those dozen are successfull.)

 

[AmyLynn2374]

i wish more people would post things like that! i love this site so much, and thank you SO MUCH.

as a side note, it's been 23 hours since the first external pip and about 19 since i made the safety hole in the other 2 eggs, and currently everyone is exactly as they were this morning, if not better. veins are receding really slowly, which i read was to be expected, but everyone is chirping, breathing, moving their beaks in and out, "fluttering", etc. membranes are all still very pliable. it's really uncomfortable watching the hatch this way because it's "wrong", and i keep thinking someone is about to die, but i am starting to be hopeful. 24 hours stable seems like a really good sign to me.

OMG.... After two years of hatching I still freak out and get nervous after hours of no progression...lol I have trained myself though to wait. Now if I think there's a problem, I will act sooner, but it's mostly just my insecurities and impatience. I am not a patient person and hatching takes it to it's limits...lol

I need some help from hatching experts.

I have been trying to hatch eggs from my own Rosecomb bantam pens since the beginning of the year, but absolutely no luck. I've mentioned it on this thread a little while ago, but I am still not getting any chicks.

I did an egg-topsy on my most recent attempt, and found that (as always) they all seemed to die between day 17-20. And two out of the four chicks pipped internally, but never externally. There were no visible problems with the chicks themselves. I kept the humidity between 50-60 in the beginning, as I usually do, but lowered it after a few months when I learned from a breeder that Rosecombs do better with lower humidity.

Ok, questions:
When you do eggtopsies does it look like there is extra fluid in the egg?
Do you ever monitor your air cells during incubation?

I just finished a silkie hatch (shipped eggs) 5 weeks ago, That cutie in my avatar is one one the hatchers. Usually if someone said they hatched over 40% I would be choking and saying that is too high. I normally hatch at 30% for the first 17 days and 75% for hatch. HOWEVER, these little silkie eggs were sooo small and different from my normal hatches. I started at my normal 30% and by day 7 I was running 40-50% because the little eggs were loosing moisture too fast. I really depend on monitoring air cells to know how and when to adjust. Had it not been for monitoring air cells and had I ran my normal low humidity, I probabably wouldn't have managed hatching out the 12 out of 14 that went into lockdown.

I would still agree that 50-60% is quite high, unless the air cells said otherwise.
When you lowered it what did you lower it to?

 

[thebulg]

OMG.... After two years of hatching I still freak out and get nervous after hours of no progression...lol I have trained myself though to wait. Now if I think there's a problem, I will act sooner, but it's mostly just my insecurities and impatience. I am not a patient person and hatching takes it to it's limits...lol

i can be patient to a point ha! but the minute things start leaving the realm of what i know is normal, it's anyone's guess how crazy i will get.

but like you said, it's a learning process to accept that when we play God, we won't do it as well, and that loss is going to be a part of the experience. i think that is the most prominent thing i learned this hatch. survival of the fittest really does matter here. the chicks are not as strong as their weakest link. animals certainly do not seem to respond well to the notion we have created as humans that every single one deserves specialized care and every chance you can make for it. and really, i am learning that over and over again with my chickens in different ways. you cannot cater to the worst of them, the weakest, the meanest. you can care for them and you can try, but not at the expense of the others. loving my chickens includes a willingness to let some of them die so the rest can live. very different than day to day human life.

 

[jenniferlamar70]

Question and sorry I've been so pesky the last few days lol. When you candle am egg and you start seeing the baby's move around day 7, should they stay in one spot or will they move around the whole egg?