How long can an incubator be down before eggs are damaged?

[bxrowley]

This Fri it will be day 20 for turkey eggs in my forced air incubator with severe storms in the forecast, and no, I don't have a generator. I suspect this is a "it just depends" kind of a response, but wondering how long I can expect the eggs will be okay, assuming we lose power? I read if the temps go below 99.5 "for too long" it can kill the embryo. I plan to wrap the bator with a heavy moving blanket should I need to, but your advise in how you've dealt with this situation would be appreciated. Thank you!

 

[frank53061]

Sounds like your as prepared as you can be.
I lost power for 8 hours cold part of spring once and still got a 70% hatch rate that was not bad.
all I had was a cook stove to heat the house and I kept the Incubator close to the stove and covered with a blanket.
All I have as far as an Incubator is a home made Styrofoam forced air with a home made egg turner.

Since then I have bought a generator we had a ice storm a couple years back and was out of power for 5 days.
They come in handy we just lost power 2 days ago because of a storm that gave us some much needed rain but knocked out our power for 6 1/2 hours it came in handy yet again.

 

[bxrowley]

Thanks for the information, and your experience losing power is encouraging should our's goes out. You gave me an idea with your wood stove, as I have a portable kerosene heater, and if needed I guess I could fire it up in the basement beside the incubator. Temps here is supposed to be around 90 outside on Fri but the air-con keeps the basement in the 70s. I'll keep my fingers Xed...

 

[KrisH]

we had guineas sitting on a nest for 3 weeks. they were in the chicken house. they abandoned the nest for 2 days, I candled the close to 40 eggs. anything with movement went into the incubator. (over 30) have had to help a few out after piping and not zipping, but so far lost only 2 keets.

as a side note, they were in varying states as apparently the guiney's kick the broody off the nest to add to it.

RobertH