Help please

[pugonuts]

Hello everyone! i am kinda newbie at this. I've raised baby chickens that we bought like a day old from IFA, but we are trying to raise quail from hatching eggs that we ordered from Ebay i'm doing this for my 6 year-old son to give him some chores because he love animals. We ordered from 2 different sources on Ebay, we put 28 eggs in the incubator and only 2 of them hatched. we did an autopsy, there were 5 chicks that developed that never hatched. We bought a little giant 9300 still air incubator, it didn't come with any directions/instructions however we did get some instructions from a model 6200 egg turner which we purchased separately. We put in a separate temperature and hydrometer which shows that the temperature is only reaching 97 degrees, even though the one on the unit says 99.6 degrees and no matter how we adjust it, it just doesn't seem to work. Our first quail eggs hatched on day 18, and our second one hatched on day 21. We ordered more quail eggs and we are going to try this again. If anyone has suggestions, ideas that could be helpful it would be greatly appreciated because we really want to have more chicks on this next hatch.

 

[redsoxs]

Hello from Kansas, pugonuts, and ! Happy you joined our community! I am both a quail and hatching rookie but you can post your questions in the following forums:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/f/5/incubating-hatching-eggs
and: https://www.backyardchickens.com/f/48/quail
Hope you get some useful advice!

 

[PD-Riverman]

Those incubators are known for being way off on the built in thermometer. I would increase the temp to 99.5 center of the egg using another thermometer---make sure the humidity is right for the incubation and right for the hatch. If you got questions on any of this----just ask.

 

[drumstick diva]

Sending good hatching vibes

for the next time.

 

[Teila]

G’Day from down under pugonuts

Welcome!

Sorry that I have no incubator experience but I do wish you all the best with attempt number two.

I hope you enjoy being a BYC member. There are lots of friendly and very helpful folks here so not only is it overflowing with useful information it is also a great place to make friends and have some fun.

 

[N F C]

Sorry your first attempt at hatching didn't go as well as you had hoped. Sending best wishes for the next time!

 

[BlueShadow]

I don't know where you live, but eggs bought online and shipped to your house always have lower hatch rates. Being shipped through the mail is really hard on them.

Other than that, the temperature control can be pretty tricky to adjust on these incubators. I had to play with mine for quite awhile before I finally got it to warm up to where it needed to be (I took 2 whole days to work with it and adjust it before I finally got the temperature right). And even after that, I still check the temperature multiple times a day and make small adjustments as needed.

If you are sure you are adjusting the temperature control correctly and it still isn't getting hot enough inside the incubator, what is the temperature of the room where the incubator is? If the incubator is in a cold place (outside, drafty garage, unheated basement) then it might just not be able to warm the air enough and you need to move the incubator somewhere warmer (indoors). That also might help with temperature swings. I don't know where your incubator is set up, but maybe this will help...