I think my first hatch was a bust

[jlhouze]

I am a school teacher that tried to hatch chicks for the first time this year. We have been so careful and excited but day 21 has come and gone and we have nothing going on. Day 21 was on 4/25 making today day 24! We are so sure that we heard a chirp today but there is no crack or pip in any of the eggs. The eggs are kind of dark and were hard to candle. We were turning by hand so when we did this the temp would drop below 99.5 for a short time. I have read that can cause a delay in the hatch but how delayed can they be? I really don't want to but when do I give up?

 

[nurse_turtle]

It would take a significant drop in temps over several hours to cause a delay. It's time to listen to your eggs, literally. Take each egg and hold it up to your ear and listen for a ticking sound. You need a super bright LED flashlight to candle and look for any motion in the air cell especially. You can also do a float test. Place the eggs in a bowl of 100 degree water and watch them for a solid minute to look for wiggles. Wigglers are alive. If all these tests reveal no life, you need to open one of the eggs. Start with a very sharp knife and use the tip to tap, tap, tap over the air cell until a small hole is made. Chip away tiny pieces of shell until you can see inside with your flashlight. You should be able to see breathing motion. If you don't, make the hole big enough to put your finger in there and press gently on the chick/embryo to feel for movement. If there is movement, wrap the egg loosely in a warm, wet paper towel and replace in the incubator and check on it fairly often.

 

[Lacrystol]

It would take a significant drop in temps over several hours to cause a delay. It's time to listen to your eggs, literally. Take each egg and hold it up to your ear and listen for a ticking sound. You need a super bright LED flashlight to candle and look for any motion in the air cell especially. You can also do a float test. Place the eggs in a bowl of 100 degree water and watch them for a solid minute to look for wiggles. Wigglers are alive. If all these tests reveal no life, you need to open one of the eggs. Start with a very sharp knife and use the tip to tap, tap, tap over the air cell until a small hole is made. Chip away tiny pieces of shell until you can see inside with your flashlight. You should be able to see breathing motion. If you don't, make the hole big enough to put your finger in there and press gently on the chick/embryo to feel for movement. If there is movement, wrap the egg loosely in a warm, wet paper towel and replace in the incubator and check on it fairly often.

X2 I would also like to add the rule of thumb is usually 5 days after the due date..

 

[jlhouze]

I am just sick my class is going to be so disappointed. I just can't figure out what I did wrong.

 

[HEChicken]

There are so many factors involved in incubating that it would be hard to say what went wrong. I know how disappointing it is, but please try not to be too discouraged. Even experienced hatchers sometimes have a bad hatch. A few things that come to mind are:

• Temperature. I know you said it read 99.5 the whole time but was the thermometer calibrated before you started? A friend of mine recently bought a Brinsea Ocatgon, supposed to be a foolproof incubator, but time after time, nothing in her eggs developed. By a process of elimination she finally determined that her thermometer had been off all along and the temperature was actually a lot higher than she thought, essentially cooking anything she tried to incubate
• Humidity. Did you calibrate your hygrometer and if so, what humidity were you striving for at the different stages of incubation? Too high and the eggs won't evaporate enough but too low and the chick can grow too big to turn and pip at the end.
• Ventilation. This is something that is often overlooked but there needs to be good air exchange in order for the chicks to get the oxygen they need while hatching, which is a pretty strenuous task.

When you candle, are you seeing development (eggs are dark) and they failed to hatch, or are they clear (possible lack of fertility)?

 

[CorinneP]

Oh Man you are the second teacher I read worried about the kids and their hatching this week : (

 

[jlhouze]

I did not calibrate either one I will find out how to do that and check that before I try again.

For the humidity I had it at 40%-50% at the beginning and have increased it to 60%-65%. Friday before I left we took a light from a phone and attampted to candle them without moving them. We could see something in almost all of the eggs.

 

[HEChicken]

To calibrate your hygrometer, take a mug/glass and place in it 1/2 cup of salt and 1/4 cup of water. It should make a sort of slush. Place the whole mug in a large ziploc bag, and place your hygrometer in the bag with it. Seal it up and leave it for 24 hours. Take the reading at the end of the 24 hours and a correctly calibrated hygrometer should read 75%. If it reads higher or lower than that, that is how much your hygrometer is off. Actually - this would be a good experiment to do with your class anyway, right?

Once you know how much it is off, you can more accurately gauge your humidity. For example if it reads 80% at the end of the 24 hours, you know it reads 5% high and throughout incubation you can adjust accordingly.

IMHO, 40-50% is a little high. Most people aim for 30-40% but some opt for "dry incubation" which means they don't add water to the incubator at all unless the humidity drops below 20%.

As for the thermometer, there is a way to calibrate it that involves ice water. I'm not clear on the details but if you search on the forum hopefully you can find out more about that. I used a far less scientific method to calibrate mine at time of purchase. I went to Walmart and looked at all of the thermometers (analog style - the digital ones are notoriously inaccurate and besides, with no batteries in them they display no reading prior to purchase anyway) and noticed that 90% of the thermometers read 75 degrees. So I determined that Walmart had their thermostat set at 75, and chose one that read "correctly". I did a further test of it at home which was to place it on top of my house thermostat and leave it for a couple of hours. At that time it read the same temp as my house thermostat, so I figured it was pretty accurate.