Warning: This was my first time incubating
After having to have tossed 2 eggs due to bacteria infection (blood ring very visible), I only had 10 eggs left (backyard mix of white leghorns and delwares).
On day 14 of incubation, the weather was beautiful, it was expected to get to 84 that day... and we lost power (along with the entire next town over). I quickly grabbed my incubator and brought it outside. It was around 9:30am and we had been having warmer days. I then had to rush and run errands... not ideal, but had no choice, work required it. My husband called me when I was on my way home about an hour and a half later and told me that my thermometer was reading past the max on it (120 fahrenheit) and that he had brought them inside and was letting them cool down. I got home in tears expecting to find all of my eggs dead. I took them all into the darkest room in my house to candle them. On the 5th egg, I saw movement. SHOCK!
I rushed the incubator over to a relatives house in a nearby town that was not affected by the outage (which turned out to be due to equipment failure on the power companies end)... as soon as I got there, hubby called and said we had power again (go figure...). Rushed home, plugged it back in. Gave it a few days before I candled again. I kept all of the eggs because I really couldn't see into the darker ones anyone (delawares lay brown eggs) and wanted to wait on the white ones anyway.
Anyway, today is the end of day 21. I was shocked to hatch out 5 of 10 eggs. All the chicks seem to be doing great.
But I just wanted to share with everyone that eggs apparently can get to 120+f and somehow survive. I would never want to intentionally test this theory, but wanted to share my experience in case someone else ever feels like crying because they think they killed all their eggs to overheating. There's always a chance.
After having to have tossed 2 eggs due to bacteria infection (blood ring very visible), I only had 10 eggs left (backyard mix of white leghorns and delwares).
On day 14 of incubation, the weather was beautiful, it was expected to get to 84 that day... and we lost power (along with the entire next town over). I quickly grabbed my incubator and brought it outside. It was around 9:30am and we had been having warmer days. I then had to rush and run errands... not ideal, but had no choice, work required it. My husband called me when I was on my way home about an hour and a half later and told me that my thermometer was reading past the max on it (120 fahrenheit) and that he had brought them inside and was letting them cool down. I got home in tears expecting to find all of my eggs dead. I took them all into the darkest room in my house to candle them. On the 5th egg, I saw movement. SHOCK!
I rushed the incubator over to a relatives house in a nearby town that was not affected by the outage (which turned out to be due to equipment failure on the power companies end)... as soon as I got there, hubby called and said we had power again (go figure...). Rushed home, plugged it back in. Gave it a few days before I candled again. I kept all of the eggs because I really couldn't see into the darker ones anyone (delawares lay brown eggs) and wanted to wait on the white ones anyway.
Anyway, today is the end of day 21. I was shocked to hatch out 5 of 10 eggs. All the chicks seem to be doing great.
But I just wanted to share with everyone that eggs apparently can get to 120+f and somehow survive. I would never want to intentionally test this theory, but wanted to share my experience in case someone else ever feels like crying because they think they killed all their eggs to overheating. There's always a chance.
