Help....my chicks are dying on day 21.

[Mandie429]

I can't understand why this is happening. I had on chick hatch on day 19 and everything went perfectly fine. Since then 4 chicks have die on day 21 still with unabsorbed yolks. They did not internally pip and we're positioned correctly for hatching. When I looked inside to see what happened it almost seems like they run out of room in the egg and just died. Any information would be helpful. The last egg was alive 2 hours ago and I came home and it was dead. They didn't look dehydrated and Temps and humidity have been steady at 99.5 degrees and humidity at 45-50 % throughout and up to 65% during lock down. I'm using a still air incubator with eggs from my chickens of various breeds.

 

[Pyxis]

So, there could be several things going on here. Firstly, 99.5 degrees is too low for a still air incubator. You want it to be 101.5 degrees measured at the top of the egg. However, with that I would expect your eggs to hatch late, so hatching on Day 19 is very odd, as that points to the temp being too high. Have you checked to make sure your thermometer is reading correctly? Because if the chicks did outgrow the shells and die, that would also be a sign of temps too high, not too low.

Another possible cause of late death is the humidity being off. For me 45-50% would be too high and they would have drowned in the shells as they tried to hatch. Did the air cells look to be the proper size? Was there liquid in the eggs of the DIS chicks when you cracked them open?

 

[AmyLynn2374]

So, there could be several things going on here. Firstly, 99.5 degrees is too low for a still air incubator. You want it to be 101.5 degrees measured at the top of the egg. However, with that I would expect your eggs to hatch late, so hatching on Day 19 is very odd, as that points to the temp being too high. Have you checked to make sure your thermometer is reading correctly? Because if the chicks did outgrow the shells and die, that would also be a sign of temps too high, not too low.

Another possible cause of late death is the humidity being off. For me 45-50% would be too high and they would have drowned in the shells as they tried to hatch. Did the air cells look to be the proper size? Was there liquid in the eggs of the DIS chicks when you cracked them open?

Xs 2 especially on the humidity. I would run a humidity method such as this if you are not in a high humidity. http://letsraisechickens.weebly.com...anuals-understanding-and-controlling-humidity

 

[Mandie429]

There wasn't any liquid in the Shell that came out. I thought the chicken hatching that early was strange as well. The only difference with that chick was a much smaller egg. The unit itself has a thermometer but I don't go by it, I have one on the inside on the top of the eggs and I checked it with another and it wasn't even a half of a degree difference. The only thing I could think of was the humidity. So what level of himidity do you recommend?

 

[AmyLynn2374]

There wasn't any liquid in the Shell that came out. I thought the chicken hatching that early was strange as well. The only difference with that chick was a much smaller egg. The unit itself has a thermometer but I don't go by it, I have one on the inside on the top of the eggs and I checked it with another and it wasn't even a half of a degree difference. The only thing I could think of was the humidity. So what level of himidity do you recommend?

I prefer 30% ish and monitoring air cells. If you take a look at that link it explains how to go by the air cells to know what's working for you. And I forgot to say

 

[Mandie429]

Thank you for the link, it was informative. I have more chicks set to hatch over the next few days so we will see how it goes by trying to adjust humidity. Thank you for the welcome Amy Lynn.