Hatching Date … No Pipping

[Hutchy89]

Newbie here, I put my eggs in incubator of 28th Aug around 1pm my friend across road had also put some in theirs for me roughly same time. They’ve had 6 hatch where I have had none. From day 1- 18 I was manually turning eggs and candled as day 11 and all seem ok.

Since day 18 (15th Sept) I’ve stopped turning them and kept incubator closed. Only thing we’ve done is turn the incubator round so we can see all eggs to check.

Is there still chance they going to hatch, or have I done something wrong.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi, welcome to the forum, glad you joined!

First, relax. It sounds like you did nothing wrong. They may still hatch.

For many different reasons not all eggs hatch on Day 21. Humidity, heredity, how and how long the eggs were stored before incubation began, and just differences in the eggs can play a part. One big factor is average incubating temperature. If the average temperature is a little high, they can hatch early. If it is a bit low they can be late. Many incubators are not preset correctly. They can be off by 1 degree or more. You need to calibrate them and adjust them to get that part right.

I've calibrated mine and my eggs still hatch about 2 days early. I get the same results, 2 days early, under a broody hen so I think my issue is heredity, not temperature related. Others normally have late hatching eggs, whether in the incubator or under a broody.

It is very possible your average incubating temperature is low, that is a common the first time you use one. Once the hatch is over I suggest you calibrate it to make sure.

But for now the best thing you can do is be patient and see what happens. There is nothing you can do to help and things you can do to hurt. Give it another three days. By then you will know whether or not you were successful. Let us know how it went.

 

[SnackMeat]

There's a thread on if you want to assist hatches. I would candle everyone in a dark room. If there is no pip then no worry about shrink wrapping.
But I would wait until day 22 with no pipping if this is your first time

 

[Hutchy89]

Thank you for commenting back. I really appreciate the advise. Since posting one hatching nicely and another egg cracked and seems to be leaking something so wondering if chick may be wrong way but hopefully I’ll be able to see more by tomorrow.

It is a new incubator so I’d assumed it would be set correct temperature as it was at 37°. I will definitely change this next time.

 

[SnackMeat]

Chicks who are positioned the opposite way can still hatch but may be in more need to help. However if they have an air hole they should be fine until the others hatch normally and then you can help.

Alternatively you can introduce a lot of steam to the area outside the incubator. This could mean bringing the incubator to the bathroom and running a hot shower. Or it could mean bringing pots of boiling water or teakettles in to the room to humidify the air (or run a humidifier.)

The liquid that you are seeing can be normal, but it could also mean the chick is aspirating "goo." This is more common (and deadly) in duck eggs than chicken eggs but chicken eggs still have them. The downside to hand turning the eggs (speaking as someone who did that due to space concerns rather than using the turner which would cut down how many eggs I could incubate) is it doesn't seem to really tackle the goo issue as well as turning.


For example, flipping an egg over does give it the 180* turn, and I would do that 5+ times a day most days. Versus when I finally got enough extra incubator space and ran the incubators turning trays once an hour, there really does seem to be something about the rotation. Not just more often (also important, supposedly a hen rotates her eggs constantly, like 2 dozen times a day or more) but also rotating rather than flipping.


I was very hands on with my first few hatches, and I don't necessarily regret that because a) I started without an incubator and had successful hatches, b) I did kill some eggs/chicks and learned, c) all the other stuff I learned that I don't feel like writing out.

The fear of shrink wrapping, for me, did more harm than actually dealing with shrink wrapping which was completely manageable. You will lost chicks sometimes and it is very much a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. So just understand, whether you assist or not, there's a good chance someone will not hatch, or they'll die soon after hatching and you have to know that yes, sometimes you chose the wrong avenue, or sometimes a chick was going to die whether assisted or not. Just don't beat yourself up about it too much.



For example, I was getting some fertile duck eggs, 1-3 eggs at a time, from a neighbor who's had ducks for years and was interested in ducklings but largely used the eggs for food. I kept trying and failing hatching these ducklings. It got to the point where I had one die on day 21 (of 28 days for this type of duck) and another one died on day 25. And I kept kicking myself thinking I was doing something wrong.


And then I thought to ask (knowing she seemed knowledgeable, and that she wanted ducklings) if she had been feeding her ducks breeder feed. There's egg laying feed and then there's breeder feed. And she didn't know breeder feed was a thing. So I had a bunch of fertile eggs, yes, that conceivably could hatch, but the mothers did not have the nutrition to really have eggs that would get the ducklings the best chances of hatching.


This is all a very long winded way of saying, do or not not assist. You'll help and hurt either way and you have to choose the option that you'll feel the least bad about yourself. I noticed a lot of people say "Nature knows best" and has a hands off approach and I think it's just easiest on their conscience (no judgement. Totally valid.) but there's plenty of people who assist and show chickens and ducklings who appear to be completely healthy and maybe just had bad luck to have an extra thick eggshell, or didn't get their egg position perfect, or was in a slightly too hot or two cold section of an incubator (always rotate egg positions in an incubator. Learned that the hard way.)