I am incubating a selection of bantams and i have 9 out of 17 hatched successfully but it has gone really quiet now and i'm starting to worry. i have no more pips and the last one hatched 8 hours ago. When i locked down I candled them all and they all looked really good. I have 8 left that are doing nothing and i'm starting to worry they are all dead so I cracked one and it is perfectly formed all yolk absorbed, no blood, hasn't pipped internally or externally but is dead. I have been searching on here to see what may have gone wrong and don't know what to do. Do i open the others in the hope that something might still be alive? If i open the egg will i kill the chick, what makes them start to breathe? when do they start to breathe? or should i just wait and see if they do it by themselves. How do i tell if they are dead already? I have 9 beautiful babies but I am horrified at the thought that something i did (like open the bator or top up the water) killed 8 just as they were about to hatch.
Just so you know, I haven't incubated yet; have been reading everying here and at univeristy sites. You will want to see the sticky at the top of this section. LOTS of great info. Here are 2 things I aware of that can happen: need enough air flow because the chicks need the fresh air to cross thru the shell and the temp needs to be lowered a bit as the chicks add to the temp and cause it to increase. IMHO
The best way to handle this is not to open them, but to candle them. If they're alive, they should be pipped into the air cell at this point, and you should be able to see the bill in there, and possibly movement. I would definitely give them the benefit of the doubt and wait at least another day. They can surprise you at times. They don't always go on schedule.
We have only incubated once, but we had one hatch two days after the initial one, I thought that was quite a spread, and it had been quiet a very long time before that final one hatched, I was actually going to toss the eggs and found a chick that had hatched at the last minute, long after I had given up.
