Incubator was down for 13+ hours on days 17-18!

[Airyaman]

So in order to get my Bielefelder flock up (lol, only have 1 rooster!), I wanted to add chicks. I had picked up 4 chicks from a local breeder, but two died, so against my better judgement, I went the Ebay hatching eggs route again.

I put 14 eggs in on 6/10. I actually had 3 power outages (we've had alot of rain and storms in AL), but most of those I was at home for and was able to hook up a lawnmower battery and inverter, so those weren't real issues. But at the end of day 17, somehow the power strip got clicked off (probably my dog), and the incubator was out from around 7:30 PM until 8:45 AM the next day. Normally I would have caught it sooner because I have a Govee in the incubator and usually check it multiple times per day. This time, for whatever reason, I didn't.

So I walk into the room into the morning of day 18 to get ready for lockdown and saw that the incubator was off. I then opened my Govee app and noted that the incubator went off around 7:30 PM the prior night. Immediately my thought was they were likely dead, but I saw some posts where people had similar situations and some of their eggs hatched. Thus, with nothing to lose, I turned the incubator back on and hoped for the best. I did not candle the eggs (although I usually do before lockdown).

On day 22, and 9 of the chicks hatched! I just candled the last 5 and none of those had actually developed, so of the 9 that did, all hatched, and as far as I can see, nothing is wrong with them. Well, I can't say that 100%, because 2 of them are not Bielefelders (yay, more mystery birds from Ebay)! But I don't think the incubator outage converted them to a different breed.

Now I need help trying to determine what my two mystery chicks are. The seller only has Bielefelders, Silkies, and Fleur d'Uccle, so these two little chicks are one of the latter two or a mutt chicken.

I think I can rule out Silkies because 1) no feathers on the feet at all and 2) the leg color is a brownish, not black or blue. However, they don't look like any photos of Fleur d'Uccle chicks I find on line. So mutt chicken?

Here are some photos of the two chicks. They pretty much both look the same with just slight variations in pattern.

Thanks for reading!

 

[Airyaman]

Oh, I didn't mention I had another incubator going and it went through the same. Much worse outcome but not because of the outage, many of those didn't develop, and one even exploded about 3 days in, so I'm thinking they sent older eggs. I put 12 CCLs in, 6 did not develop, 1 blew up, 4 hatched, and one is still in the incubator (candling shows good potential).

 

[RoseHawke]

Those Bielefelder eBay eggs, out of curiosity, may I ask where in the country they came from?

 

[Airyaman]

Those Bielefelder eBay eggs, out of curiosity, may I ask where in the country they came from?

South Alabama. Time will tell if they are good stock but the ones that are definitely Bielefelders look right in chick form.

 

[RoseHawke]

You had some very good luck then. I had 14 cochin bantam eggs shipped from Georgia which was probably a comparable distance and got two chicks, and one of those I had to cull (may be my fault - I had incubator issues.)

 

[Airyaman]

You had some very good luck then. I had 14 cochin bantam eggs shipped from Georgia which was probably a comparable distance and got two chicks, and one of those I had to cull (may be my fault - I had incubator issues.)

In all fairness, I picked the eggs up in person. The first shipment came via UPS (not sure why they chose UPS but they appear to be worse than USPS if you can imagine that) in one day and they must have played football with it. I was going to FL and while it was a little out of the way, I knew I would treat them better than any carrier.

I have found the farther away the eggs are, the worse hatch rate I have. Too much handling I think. My best hatch rates have been close sellers. Best yet was from AL as well, but sadly I got 7/9 cockerels!