Help! Are my embryos dead??

[chasing ducks]

My husband checked my incubator today and noticed it was at 103 farenheit. I have a little giant and I constantly have to readjust it, slight room temp changes throw it off. He adjusted and accidentally turned the dial the wrong way and when he checked it agin later it was at 117!!!!

He doesn't know when he turned it up, could have been 20 minutes or 2 hours. I have 11 runner duck eggs at 14 days, 7 guinea fowl eggs and a chicken egg at 9 days. All 11 duck eggs had swimming embryos yesterday, today none are moving. Is there any chance that any will survive??? I am so upset right now, this was my first time trying to hatch eggs and I have been worrying over them night and day, I don't want to lose them.

 

[jsvand5]

At 117 I'd say they are done if it was for any length of time at all. Sorry about your losses. How close to hatching were they? If they were close I would just let them go and hope for the best.

If you want to never have to worry about it again maybe look into getting a good proportional thermostat. They cost quite a bit, but I use them for all of my reptile and bird eggs. They hold the temps to within about 0.2 degrees. The brand I use is called herpstat. May be a little expensive for what you need, but if you plan on hatching a lot of eggs in the future it may be worth it. I trust them with some very expensive snake eggs and I have never lost a viable egg.

http://spyderrobotics.com/products/herpstat.html