How long should I wait before giving up and starting over?

[as110]

This is my first hatch or rather first try. Nothing hatched yet. It is day 22 and no internal pips on 14 eggs. I have a feeling they are all dead.

 

[Pyxis]

What have your temps and humidity been like? Do you have a still air or forced air incubator?

 

[PD-Riverman]

This is my first hatch or rather first try. Nothing hatched yet. It is day 22 and no internal pips on 14 eggs. I have a feeling they are all dead.

First question. What was the DATE you set the eggs in the incubator? What kind of incubator? Have you candled the eggs at any time?

 

[as110]

I had temps low and high unfortunately. I don't hold out much hope that is why I wonder if I should wait any longer.
38C 100F on the first 10 days. On day 10 power went out for 3 hours and the eggs felt cool when I got home.

I candled the next day and most were still moving. I candled on day 13 because there were 2 that I wasn't sure were late starters. On day 13 there was change and movement but still had 2 questionable. On day 15 I removed 3. 2 were unfertilized and one was infected and dead unrecognizable blob.

On day 18 I put a hygrometer in the box after candling and struggled to get the humidity level up for lockdown. I saw two that were moving for sure. Half of the eggs still had some space on the bottom part and light got in. I posted pictures to find out if that was normal but I didn't get any response. I found some candling pictures online and two of them looked like it was normal. But in the eggs where there was still space I could not see movement, just that they grew from day 15.

On day 19 I replaced the bulb to help with the humidity and temp. I didn't want to use blankets to keep the temp up because they started to get very hot. I didn't want to start a fire when I was out. Well that didn't work. It caused a spike in temp. I won't even tell you high high. It was less than an hour so I thought the eggs internal temp takes time to rise and I was hopeful all was not lost but I did not candle and did not touch or move the eggs.

Humidity is still a problem. The best I could do is 60 and that's with boiling water inside the box and 2 sponges in a wet container and a facecloth hanging on the side.
at the end of day 21 I cut a hole on the side to fit my hand in there and lit my phone so I could see the air cells. All of them are good size, non of them are pipped. That was 36 hours ago.

In a few hours day 22 ends. I will try water on sunday and if there is nothing then I am ready to start over.

I have to change the incubator. It is home made and needs some improvements. I also have a UPS for power outages and I will get another digital hygrometer that measures faster. The one I have is analog. I have 2 thermometers and I want to move the light to the top from the side so the temp is more even in the corners.

I am sad but ready to move on. I felt like I was sitting on the eggs it was so much work day and night to monitor. At the end it is hard to not touch them and wait for yet one more day. I read some posts where people hatched up to 28 days. Wow that's long, another week I am not sure there is a point to wait that long since my temps were never on the low end except when the power went out.

I guess I already know the answer. :0(

 

[as110]

I set the eggs on March 9 and 19:00.

 

[PD-Riverman]

I set the eggs on March 9 and 19:00.

Well you are on day 22. You mentioned a few things above----go for it---if you feel the need. Do you have a steth-o-scope you can listen to them with??

 

[as110]

I have but I didn't think it would work on eggs. We tried a microphone and turned up the volume LOL. Can you say desperate?
I candled just now. No internal pips.

 

[Pyxis]

I wouldn't give up just yet, due to several factors. The first being the power outage - that could easily be causing them to run a little late. The other is that you never said if you were using forced air or still air, meaning if there was a fan in there or not. If no fan, you were running the temp low the entire time. 99.5 degrees is the temperature you use in a forced air incubator, but for a still air with no fan that's too low. For a still air you actually need the temp to 101.5 degrees measured at the top of the eggs. Anything less is too cool, and if you were running at 100 degrees, that is a full degree and a half too low. That would definitely cause a late hatch.

I was going to take a look at your candling pictures for you but I couldn't find them.

 

[as110]

no fan, basically the temps are between 38C at the far end away from the lamp and 39C in the middle, 40C by the lamp and I kind of moved them around at turning times. That's 100.4 -102.2 (104 is 40C)

The pictures are in another thread:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...re-lockdown-bummed-out-pictures#post_18259095

 

[Pyxis]

no fan, basically the temps are between 38C at the far end away from the lamp and 39C in the middle, 40C by the lamp and I kind of moved them around at turning times. That's 100.4 -102.2 (104 is 40C)

The pictures are in another thread:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...re-lockdown-bummed-out-pictures#post_18259095

So the pictures in the other thread don't look good What do they look like now?

I think the incubator was the problem here. That's a very large temperature range and 104 degrees is the killing temperature - once the inside of the egg heats up to that, the embryo dies. If part of the incubator was that hot and eggs were sitting there long enough to get up to that temperature, they would die.