I'm on day 14 and worried/losing eggs

[uktech]

The most important thing to have in your incubator when your incubating eggs is a calibrated thermometer or three and a salt-tested humidity gauge.

Do you have these?

Hi, thanks for your response. I have gone through the thermometers extensively I think and have a good setup in that regard. Actually I have a thread on that where this all should have been posted but accidentally started a new one...

Two of the thermometers also have humidity gauges which both show identical readings but didn't know about salt testing going to read up on that but probably a bit late now.

 

[nao57]

Candling eggs isn't an exact science. Unless you are absolutely sure they are dead, leave them in there.

I made this mistake myself and it caused me tremendous anguish. I thought an egg was dead for very similar reasons as you. And it was literally like 2 or 3 days from hatching.

Thinking it was dead, I took it out and put it in the garbage with the shell mashed open. Then there I saw this little tiny duckling gasping for air premature... and it died right there because I was too impatient.

So I hope you can learn from my mistakes, without acquiring 'anguish'.

 

[uktech]

I made this mistake

I'm so sorry to hear that. It's a similar reason to why I'm checking over and over and hesitating on at least a few of the eggs I took out last night. The ones I was more confident on, I nervously cracked open, and yeh, poor things had given up. Not even a trace of a vein, which then tells me the rest of the eggs I'm questioning myself on are also dead.

 

[Kiki]

37.2c is 98.9f correct? If so this may not be good enough.

I am afraid your humidity may actually be higher that what your gauge is reading.


Is it possible that your bator had hot spots?
Hot spots are much more likely to kill the eggs than a cooler spot.

 

[uktech]

37.2c is 98.9f correct? If so this may not be good enough.

Sorry, that's a typo on my part...it actually is steady at 37.7....was thinking about the .2 margin when I was typing and ended up typing 37.2 degrees (correcting that now). No matter what happens, the temps stay within those margins but mostly on the higher side (37.9) in the hope that the corner temps are then closer to 37.7. Having said that, with fewer eggs, i've now positioned them away from the corners.

Humidity I think is the culprit but I can't be certain.

hotspots are possible no doubt but by having the good and bad eggs in random positions on the rollers, throws me off. I don't know how to check without buying yet more thermometers. I have however just repositioned the main thermometers probe to see how it reads.

The attached image is current temps from two of the thermometers. The 3rd is inside

 

[Tonyroo]

What part of the house is your incubator sitting in? Your relative humidity can impact your incubators humidity and also outside temperature being high during the day and low at night.
You also live in the UK which normally has high humidity anyway. Your ( ambient air around the incubator ) needs to be stable for it to not have drastic fluctuations.

 

[uktech]

What part of the house is your incubator sitting in? Your relative humidity can impact your incubators humidity and also outside temperature being high during the day and low at night.
You also live in the UK which normally has high humidity anyway. Your ( ambient air around the incubator ) needs to be stable for it to not have drastic fluctuations.

It resides in my office which is at room temperature, but I do have the windows slightly open to allow for air circulation. The brooder will also be here until the chicks are ready to go into their coop, weather permitting.

 

[Tonyroo]

So if you have a window open that means the office has a draft?

 

[uktech]

So if you have a window open that means the office has a draft?

No not at all. It's open ever so slightly just to let air circulate. You don't feel any draft whatsoever and the incubator is at the opposite end of the room, about 15 feet away.

 

[Acre4Me]

While I am no expert here, I’m going to add that the health and/or genetics of the eggs is a factor not mentioned. Perhaps the eggs were deficient in some way and quit. Perhaps the chicks had a genetic anomaly that caused them to quit. Since this is your first time incubating, then you don’t have a previous successful hatch to compare it to. What source are the eggs from?

Recently, I did my first chicken hatch. Eggs from my flock. Several were clear (not fertilized), 2 quit. 2 didn’t hatch, but I only gave them an additional 24 hours after the others hatched. I used a cheap still-air styrofoam incubator, and had pretty decent hatch: 26 fertile eggs turned into 22 chicks. Interestingly, 3 chicks hatched with mild issues, two were corrected within 36 hours, one had to be culled. These three had same breed mom(s) -they hatched from same color egg, and only 1 breed that we have lays that egg. My guess is maybe a nutritional deficit (but all eat same feed), or genetics. So, something to consider for these eggs you are hatching.

good luck with the remaining eggs!