Help with Polish Bantam Eggs! Chicks have gone extremely still; is this normal?

[ziggy7777]

Hiya,

I'm very new to this forum and to all this! I've got my first batch of eggs in an incubator (now day 18) with a hygrometer and have tried to maintain stable humidity and temperature throughout. I candled the eggs a few times until today and the chicks were moving all the time and growing!

Today I prepared the incubator for lockdown and candled one last time. The air cells look ok I think (judging from pictures I could find online of what an air cell should look like on day 18 of incubation) and the chicks take up most of the egg now. However all but one chick were incredibly still when I checked them. Is this normal at this stage?! Why on earth have they gone so still? Really worried I've done something wrong and wondering if I could do something to fix/help at this stage?

Many thanks for reading!

Ziggy

 

[ziggy7777]

Added some water today as humidity was falling a bit, today is day 19! Have never done this before, but waiting is sooo stressful!!

 

[ziggy7777]

I can now hear chirping from inside one of the eggs!!!

 

[Stacyoung13]

The babies, (from my experience), sometimes take a break to get ready for all the hard work coming. I’ve had babies not moving when candled and hatch healthy. The hardest part of hatching eggs is the WAITING. Sounds like your doing good. Just be patient and keep the temp and humidity up and you should do fine. Keep me updated!

 

[MelissaRose]

Welcome to the forum!
Congrats on the chirps! you should have some pips soon. The ones that are not moving could be resting like @Stacyoung13 said, or could have died. If it did die, it is not your fault. They can die like that. The only thing to do now is wait, hope they were just resting, and that they will hatch. Good luck, and please keep us posted =)

 

[ziggy7777]

Thanks so much guys!! I so hope it's that they're taking a break to rest and get ready to hatch! I'm not opening the incubator at al, though it is soooo difficult to just wait, but today humidity's spiked quite high at 79%. I'm not sure what to do about that, if I should just open it a little to get it down a little or if it's not a problem! Day 20 today!! One egg is still chirping at me when I whistle!

 

[ziggy7777]

Ok humidity went even higher to 90%. I wasn't sure what on earth to do so I opened the incubator to let it come down a bit to the 70s at least and I quickly candled two eggs on the incubator floor with my phone flashlight (without handling them/picking them up). One of them has pipped internally for sure. I saw what seemed like a little leg moving in and out of the air sac! The other was still and its air sac seemed small for 20 days. What do I do now?!!!!