Incubator smells like rotten eggs

[emimyoshi]

Hey guys! I’m new to this forum and also a newbie on hatching eggs. When I was a kid me and my dad would try to hatch eggs but would never succeed and could never figure out what we did wrong. We haven’t tried hatching eggs in years but we decided to try again. This time we are trying to hatch quail eggs and we are on day 13. We candled most of the eggs about a week ago and were able to see red veins in a few eggs but the others we couldn’t see through cause of the spots that were on the shell. On Monday we noticed a rotten egg smell coming from the incubator But didn’t see any cracks or any liquid coming out. But today we checked again and one egg was cracked but it looked like there were feathers coming out of it but wasn’t moving at all. There were two other eggs that were stuck together from this orange colored liquid that was coming out of one of the eggs next to it that had a crack. We already threw those eggs out but also noticed three eggs moving a little bit. I’m a little worried that because of those bad eggs, the others might not hatch now. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[Nabiki]

The first thing you want to do is make sure that the incubator is as clean as you can get it. Candle the remaining eggs and get rid of any dead ones.

A few questions:
What temperature are you incubating at? Don't trust your incubator's readings. If you don't already have calibrated thermometer(s) and hygrometers in them, get some before you try to hatch again.
What humidity?
Are the eggs getting turned regularly?
Did you candle before you put them in for cracks?

And, welcome to BYC!

 

[emimyoshi]

Thank you so much for replying!!

I wasn’t sure if it would’ve been a good idea to clean the incubator cause the eggs need to be under heat the whole time. So I haven’t touched anything else after I threw out the bad eggs. The temperature says it’s at 99 degrees and the humidity is at 38%. The incubator that we have is an automatic egg turner so we haven’t been turning the eggs manually but we do check to make sure that it is turning. I candled the eggs when we first got them and none of them had cracks but a week ago I did find one with a small little whole in it so I threw that one out as soon as I saw it. The inside of it looked like it was starting to rot so I didn’t want it to get any worse.

as of right now the bad eggs are already gone and we are starting to get everything ready for lockdown and will remove the eggs out of the egg turner tomorrow since it will be the 14 day.

 

[Nabiki]

99 is a little low, but they should still hatch (temp should be 99.5-100). Are these Coturnix quail? If so, 30% humidity seems to be about ideal until hatch. Then the humidity should go up to 50-60%.

If you are trusting the readings on your incubator, I can just about guarantee that the temperature is wrong. Almost everyone here will tell you the same thing. I have three incubators and they are all inaccurate, up to 3 or 4 degrees.

 

[emimyoshi]

Yes these are Coturnix quail eggs. I have a separate thermometer inside the incubator that shows the temperature and the humidity because I have also read that incubators don’t show the accurate temp either.

I’m hoping that the ones that were moving a little bit are still going to make it but I’m an a little nervous that they might not. But we will see in the next few days!!

 

[emimyoshi]

YOU GUYS IM SO HAPPY THE EGGS ARE FINALLY HATCHING!!!!