Heard chirping about 24 hours ago, no more since...HELP

[the poppster]

Sad day...I had a chick pip yesterday...the humidity is a tough thing to maintain in a still air incubator...so it's a constant challenge...the little guy broke the shell and I worried that there were still veins showing in the visible membrane...so after reading more information I decided to leave it be and quit messing with it and let it do its job...the info said that it should be okay and could take 8hrs or more to break out...well I left it alone...and woke up to find that the little guy had zipped the egg all around....but due to the low humidity it didn't manage to break the outer membrane...so it didn't make it...perfectly formed he was trapped inside the shell...it appears that a bit of the shell membrane dried over its beak...I really don't like using an incubator for brooding and hatching eggs...you can't beat an experienced little broody hen...unfortunately I don't have one available right now and my Seramas are laying eggs...so I have no choice if I want some chicks...I will keep a very close eye on the next chick and mess away with it...I don't want to have to discard any more dead chicks...because I just let nature take its course....in nature the humidity would remain steady...and I believe that the chick would have survived and probably thrived...so far I've got three chicks...one standard size mutt and two tiny Serama chicks...a brown and tan one and a white one with little black wing tips...the little ones try to tuck themselves under the big chick occasionally...funny! Anyhow I will hover around my Hoverbator incubator...and will assist with the hatch out whenever it appears that I am needed. The eggs are not the problem...it's the incubator...humidity that is the problem.

 

[FridayYet]

Sorry about your chick. It's always hard to lose one.

I've had the opposite experience -where I had a broody kill a chick at hatch, crush another, and the last one I grabbed and popped in an incubator and it hatched just fine. If I had taken all 3eggs earlier they would have made it.

Do you have extra sponges in your incubator? They can really help.

 

[BellaChick1]

Looks like I lost them all, never found one that pipped through the shell but I gave them 3 extra days to be sure they weren't late and no movement so I'm gonna start over. I didn't have the heart to tell my kids that waited patiently for their Christmas chickens so I found some day old chicks and bought them. I may try incubation again in the spring so we can get it right. Thanks for all the advice and encouragement, I feel like a horrible chick mama!