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Mablethechicken
Songster
Hi! I ordered my eggs from My Pet Chicken. Their customer service was great and the eggs all arrived safely. When I was tracking my package it said they were coming from NC.@Mablethechicken Also, any chance you had any rolling air cells in any of your shipped eggs? I've had so many saddled rolling air cells in my recent orders. I'm curious if you did anything differently for them? Some of my rolling air cells have fixed themselves but the majority haven't. I started them out standing fat end up, in an egg carton cut individually and without bottoms. I'm on Day 12 for my first clutch, but I also have eggs on Day 10, and Day 2, and some that I received today.
Lastly, I haven't finished reading yet, but do you need any pictures? I have some that I believe to be clear, one that I believe is gone and has a blood ring (not 100% sure as it still has veins too and no smells yet, but I am keeping a close "nose" on the possibilities)
I wanted to add that I have read the huge thread here on BYC about incubating and I refer back to it very often. I'm just curious about any new information or maybe you explain it differently, if that makes sense. I could read that enormous amount of information 10 times but I still need to refer back to it due to my nerves keeping me from absorbing it all
I did have one that I would describe as a floating or rolling air cell but I also think it was a yolker and not fertilized because it never developed at all after going into the incubator. I don’t think it’s uncommon for rolling air cells to reattach in fertilized eggs if set upright and still develop ok which is why I think this one wasn’t actually fertilized. I ordered 6 and got 7 so there was an extra one anyway. One other egg was an early quitter and showed an obvious blood ring. I left it in a few days longer just to make sure and continued to monitor by candling until I finally removed it. The other 5 all hatched!
I set them big end up for about 16 hours to let them settle before putting them in the incubator. I did what you did with the cut down egg carton with open bottom but I didn’t separate the cups. However, I didn’t do that for several days because I hadn’t read about air cell issues with shipped eggs and originally set them in the incubator on their sides. I turned them 3 to 5 times a day until about day 15. Temp was kept generally between 98-100 degrees but I did have some fluctuations at night when it dropped down to 96 briefly. I read that brief cooling periods are ok and actually natural because they occur when a broody hen gets up to eat and drink.
I read everything I could from lots of different sources and came to the conclusion that lower humidity was the better bet especially for shipped eggs. It seems to me that viability is better with a slightly too large air cell vs one that’s too small from the humidity being too high. So I decided to incubate between 30 to 40%. Occasionally it would go up to about 45% temporarily. I brought it up to about 50% just before lockdown because the air cells were big enough and I figured it would make it easier to get up to the 65-70% for hatching.
I also candled a lot. I know a lot of hatchers will discourage frequent candling and/or opening the incubator too much but I had to know what was going on in there. And it was also my first time so I wanted to see the development for myself at every stage and be aware if I needed to adjust humidity. If I was a pro and hatching dozens of eggs in a professional incubator I probably wouldn’t have bothered candling at all but since it was for my tiny backyard flock I was really invested in the success of each one.
Another piece of advice. I don’t know what kind of eggs you are hatching but mine were all different colors so visibility varied significantly when candling. Unless you see the blood ring and/or see leaking or notice a smell I wouldn’t give up hope on an egg. A couple times I was sure the colored eggs weren’t developing but I was completely wrong.
At hatch time, I watched them like a hawk because I was really concerned they would pip on the wrong end due to the wonky air cells and since I had them sitting upright I thought it would be harder for them to hatch if they were malpositioned. I also read up on how to assist if necessary and was prepared. Luckily they all pipped at the right end and 4 hatched without any assistance. The one that I created a safety hole for probably didn’t need it. I just panicked because I could hear it chirping inside and knew it had internally pipped 24 hours prior. I was worried about it running out of air. Apparently though it’s lack of oxygen that triggers the instinct to jerk their heads and peck the shell to get out. Not sure if instinct is the right word. I think I read that it’s actually an involuntary reaction but in any case I learned to be more patient and trust more in the natural process.
I don’t know what other advice I can give except to read as much as you can and try not to stress. (Although I stressed the whole time!) haha
I included a full recap of the hatch in the April hatch-a-long Thread with pictures etc.
Yes definitely post pictures! Would love to see and maybe I can offer advice or at least share some commonalities with what I saw in mine to rest your mind at ease.
