I just hatched 23 of 56 quail eggs, and when I went to do eggtopsies more seemed that they should have hatched out. Close to another 18 where to the point of coming out but just quite. I didnt turn the turner off because of some other Black Maran eggs that I put in about a week ago. So my question is should have I turned it off?
Well, if you have a turner that is inside the incubator, the moving parts can be deadly for a newly hatched chick as it emerges and flops around. Chick crushed by turner = unpleasant. With Brinsea incubators, at least most of them, the incubator itself is set into the turner, so there are no moving parts for chicks to get hurt on, at least. Also, the eggs that are about to hatch need to get themselves into position to hatch. Orient themselves in the egg. Kinda hard to do that when the egg is constantly moving. Honestly, when I had a staggered hatch, I turned off the turner, hand turned the eggs that needed it until the first pips, and then stopped turning until the hatch was over. The newly hatched chicks play 'kickball' with the unhatched eggs anyway, so they still got 'turned' in a way!
Yes, it is important that you stop turning your eggs three days before they're due to hatch. So if you had done that, yes, you'd probably have had a slightly better hatch rate, but maybe only another few chicks. I don't think that every single fully developed chick you found would have hatched okay, so don't blame yourself for killing them all. Also, people on here often report forgetting to stop their turner and forgetting to raise their humidity and still having great hatches.
