Incubator/Egg Help

[jojackc]

First I would like to say thank you for having a forum like this around. I am just getting into this and its my first time posting. So here is my problem that I need help with. I have 5 gambel Quail eggs that put into an incubator for hatching. The mother was brooding them before I got them. The problem is I don't know if it was for one day or 20 days. So I set the incubator up for 100 degrees and a hair under 60 for humidity. It has now been 24 day since I put them in the incubator and I think the eggs might be a lost cause. What do you think wait it out for a few more days or start opening them up to see if they ever even started to develop.

 

[CheerfulChirp]

Well, it's up to you but if you open one up and find a live chick in there you can't stick the shell back together and continue incubating it...

If any of them smell bad, then I'd get rid of those now, but you could keep the rest. There wouldn't be any harm in waiting a few more days to see whether anything hatches or not.

 

[CheerfulChirp]

If you really need to know more now, then you can 'candle' the eggs to see what's inside. It can be hard to do with quail eggs, but the general idea is that if you shine a bright enough light through the eggs, any that have been developing will be a shadowy blue/black color because the chick is inside. If you see movement, they're definitely alive, but if you don't then you still don't know whether they're dead or not. Any unfertilized eggs, or those that died very early on, will be a yellowish/transparent color when you shine a light through. You could discard or open any clear eggs to see what happened.

There is also another method called the 'water test', or 'float test'. You must check that your eggs don't have cracks in them though, else you could drown the chicks. Carefully place your eggs on the surface of 2 inches of warm water. If you see any noticeable movement of the eggs, then it suggests there is a live chick in there. If you don't, then you could still have a live chick in there.

If you get to the point where you feel like discarding your eggs, but aren't completely sure that they're dead, some people carefully make a hole in the wide end of the egg where the air sac should be, and start slowly opening the egg from there. If at any point you see movement, you can still put the egg back into the incubator and see whether the chick is strong enough to make it.

 

[jojackc]

So after 29 days I decided to open the egg's they all had chicks in them but they where all dead. No bad smells, so not sure how long they need to be dead in an egg to smell bad. Like I said this was my first time. I had an incubator laying around that my aunt gave me years ago and some eggs fell into my lap so I gave it a try. I didn't want to disappoint my two daughters 5 and 2. So I found a lady on craigslist that had some day old chicks. I threw them into the incubator and said girls, girls come look LOL. They are not gambel quail like I wanted but quail to say the least. Talking with the lady I purchased these from it sounds like I may have not been turning the eggs enough. I was lucky to turn them twice a day and I know there where a few days where I only did it once. Lesson learned. Once my new quail start laying eggs I will be sure to buy an automatic egg turner to avoid this. My new chicks are now 1 week old.