Incubation failure

[metcarl]

This was my first time incubating eggs and none of them hatched or even began to develop out of 14 eggs. The three possibilities are:
1) all the eggs were infertile (unlikely IMO since the person I got the eggs from locally regularly hatches eggs
2) the eggs were stored improperly prior to incubation (again, unlikely due to the experience of the person I got the eggs from and I immediately placed them in the incubator after I got them)
3) something went wrong in the incubator early - so I’m focusing g on this possibility

I have a Brinsea Max Advanced that holds 14 eggs. It controls the temp (set on 99.5) and humidity at “proper” levels by filling up one or both water chambers. I did NOT verify the humidity or temp independently. So my first change with my next attempt is to buy a hygrometer/thermometer to use. Another thought is that I accidentally let the water chamber go empty for an undetermined length of time. The Brinsea instructions said to check every two days - I checked after about 36 hours, so I can’t imagine it was empty for long. However, could that have caused the failure to begin development in all of the eggs?

Any other suggestions?

 

[Rose Quartz]

This was my first time incubating eggs and none of them hatched or even began to develop out of 14 eggs. The three possibilities are:
1) all the eggs were infertile (unlikely IMO since the person I got the eggs from locally regularly hatches eggs
2) the eggs were stored improperly prior to incubation (again, unlikely due to the experience of the person I got the eggs from and I immediately placed them in the incubator after I got them)
3) something went wrong in the incubator early - so I’m focusing g on this possibility

I have a Brinsea Max Advanced that holds 14 eggs. It controls the temp (set on 99.5) and humidity at “proper” levels by filling up one or both water chambers. I did NOT verify the humidity or temp independently. So my first change with my next attempt is to buy a hygrometer/thermometer to use. Another thought is that I accidentally let the water chamber go empty for an undetermined length of time. The Brinsea instructions said to check every two days - I checked after about 36 hours, so I can’t imagine it was empty for long. However, could that have caused the failure to begin development in all of the eggs?

Any other suggestions?

Wow! Idk, any of my fertile eggs even early death like day 2 or 3 have blood rings. For you to have all clear that's weird. I can't imagine how low humidity could cause a problem, unless the Brinsea is set up to add extra heat when it adds water, and with out the water there was a huge temp spike. do a few days running with the tested thermometer and hygrometer. Give it a check too for running with no water.

 

[katiek77]

This was my first time incubating eggs and none of them hatched or even began to develop out of 14 eggs. The three possibilities are:
1) all the eggs were infertile (unlikely IMO since the person I got the eggs from locally regularly hatches eggs
2) the eggs were stored improperly prior to incubation (again, unlikely due to the experience of the person I got the eggs from and I immediately placed them in the incubator after I got them)
3) something went wrong in the incubator early - so I’m focusing g on this possibility

I have a Brinsea Max Advanced that holds 14 eggs. It controls the temp (set on 99.5) and humidity at “proper” levels by filling up one or both water chambers. I did NOT verify the humidity or temp independently. So my first change with my next attempt is to buy a hygrometer/thermometer to use. Another thought is that I accidentally let the water chamber go empty for an undetermined length of time. The Brinsea instructions said to check every two days - I checked after about 36 hours, so I can’t imagine it was empty for long. However, could that have caused the failure to begin development in all of the eggs?

Any other suggestions?

Humidity would not be an issue with the egg failure. My guess would be temp. Defiantly buy another thermometer to check your machine. Another reason could be did you over handle your eggs while incubating? Over handling can cause early embryo deaths. Did you wash your hands before handling the eggs? If not you could of introduced bacteria to the hatch. Did you wash your eggs before incubating them? If you did you could of washed off the bloom and introduced bacteria to them. The only thing humidity wise that could of caused a bad hatch is high humidity. If you live in a semi go very humid area I would recommend dry hatching. It’s just set and forget. You can track your aircell with lines on day 7,10, and 18. The lowest dip of the aircell is where the chick should pip. I have my dips faced upward. In my pic you can see the chick pipped right on the x. X marks the spot. Lol. And you can also see I do not wash my eggs. I just use a dry paper towel to knock off anything that might get in the way of it turning. With this batch I had 95% hatchrate. Would of been a 100 if I could of seen through the dark marans egg to see it wasn’t any good.

 

[metcarl]

I did not overhandle. I immediately placed in incubator after washing my hands. I only candled on day 10 and again at day 15 to confirm my suspicions.

 

[Fairview01]

If your eggs are completely clear without evidence of any development then it's the eggs unless you had such an extreme extended temperature spike during the first 48 hours that the embryo was killed before any visible veins developed. Basically cooked them.


I don't wash my eggs, set eggs with more than a little poo on them, the incubator hasn't been cleaned by myself or the former owner for decades. Just wiped out of anything loose. I only candle one time on day 19 to remove quitters. I have an 85% hatch rate and that percentage takes into account the quitters.

If you source eggs from this person again I would suggest you crack one open into a bowl and look for the telltale bullseye of a fertilized egg.

Unless you examined the eggs that didn't hatch for stage of development everything here is just speculation as to the cause of your failure.

 

[katiek77]

I did not overhandle. I immediately placed in incubator after washing my hands. I only candled on day 10 and again at day 15 to confirm my suspicions.

Ok so no rookie mistakes awesome! . I would definitely check the thermometer then. I agree with @Rose Quartz I’m shocked there wasn’t a blood ring either. Did you see anything at all on day 10?

 

[metcarl]

I didn’t see anything at Day 10 - just a dark shadow from the yolk. Many of them are super dark Marans eggs but they all looked the same. I broke open a lighter one to confirm and there was no development from what I could tell. However the shell was really thick and I broke the yolk so couldn’t look for a bullseye or other signs. Tomorrow is technically hatch day and I left the rest in the incubator in case I was wrong. I’ll open them all tomorrow to see. I know they’re all non developers but I was hoping I was wrong on the darker ones.

 

[katiek77]

I didn’t see anything at Day 10 - just a dark shadow from the yolk. Many of them are super dark Marans eggs but they all looked the same. I broke open a lighter one to confirm and there was no development from what I could tell. However the shell was really thick and I broke the yolk so couldn’t look for a bullseye or other signs. Tomorrow is technically hatch day and I left the rest in the incubator in case I was wrong. I’ll open them all tomorrow to see. I know they’re all non developers but I was hoping I was wrong on the darker ones.

Marans eggs are sometimes hard to see and also take longer to hatch due to their thicker shells. Some marans can take up to 24 days to hatch. I have even seen a day 25. The bullseye disappears once it has started to incubate. If you want to incubate marans I definitely recommend lower humidity. With their shells so thick it takes more time for them to evaporate and develop a nice air cell. My first batch of marans I had in with Brahmas. I did the recommended humidity settings. Brahmas came out fine. Two days later marans were sticky and I had to assist. I ran low humidity this last hatch with marans, brahmas, and polish. A marans was the first to hatch and all that hatched were not sticky. I would definitely leave them in there longer.

 

[metcarl]

Except I could see clearly enough that there was not a large embryo (actually the second candling was at Day 16) in the egg, just the size you would expect from a yolk. I’ll leave them be for now, but when I do open them up, what else should I look for?

 

[katiek77]

Except I could see clearly enough that there was not a large embryo (actually the second candling was at Day 16) in the egg, just the size you would expect from a yolk. I’ll leave them be for now, but when I do open them up, what else should I look for?

If it’s just yolk and albumen it could of possibly been infertile. Infertility could be young chickens, to many hens per roo ratio. I had one roo to three hens and out of 6 eggs 4 were fertile. So every egg laid is not guaranteed to be fertile. If you see black spots and it’s sloshy in it possibly bacteria. If they are green embryo death. Others could probably chime in more.