Incubator was off for 18 hours: 2, 7, 12 and 18 day eggs inside. Results.

[3LittleBirdies]

I love my housekeeper. I really do. We work out of our house, so no time to clean it ourselves. She also has chickens and loves every single baby that was I hatch. I only bring this up because she accidentally turned it off around noon on a Tuesday a couple of months ago. She accidentally unplugged it. I woke up at 6-7 AM the NEXT day.

When I first discovered this I am sure I screamed and cried. I had loads of hand picked very expensive Serama eggs at all different days of development (2, 7, 12, 18 days). I was beyond devastated. I didn't know prior to the outage the number of living embryos were in the eggs that were 2 and 7 days, but I had 12 2-day and 8 7-day old eggs. I had 12 larger chicken eggs at 12-days and 4 that were 18-days. From everything I had been able to find this was a death sentence. I spot candled a few and nothing,

I was just about to toss everything in the trash when I found an article on here about a similar circumstance. The basics of the article was to leave the eggs in, turn in back on and recheck in 2 days..

Every single 12 and 18 day made it and my hatch rates for the 2 and 7 day old eggs were normal. I was and am amazed. It's like I treat each egg like it is the most delicate creation on earth and then come face to face with how strong nature really is.

So, for those of who who experience a prolonged power outage, I would sure wrap up my incubator to keep it as warm as possible, but when power resumes plug it back it and give those babies a chance. They may very well surprise you!

 

[Shamo Hybrid]

Exactly. People always always make it out to be like half a degree off in the incubator and you're done for, or if you open up the incubator during lock down it's an automatic death sentence...... chickens and eggs are way hardier than we give them credit for. As long as you don't cook your eggs in the incubator, it will survive, even with drastic drop in temperatures. So just try not to push the temperature too high, play it safe and you'll be safe!

 

[Barb Root Hinkkanen]

I love my housekeeper. I really do. We work out of our house, so no time to clean it ourselves. She also has chickens and loves every single baby that was I hatch. I only bring this up because she accidentally turned it off around noon on a Tuesday a couple of months ago. She accidentally unplugged it. I woke up at 6-7 AM the NEXT day.

When I first discovered this I am sure I screamed and cried. I had loads of hand picked very expensive Serama eggs at all different days of development (2, 7, 12, 18 days). I was beyond devastated. I didn't know prior to the outage the number of living embryos were in the eggs that were 2 and 7 days, but I had 12 2-day and 8 7-day old eggs. I had 12 larger chicken eggs at 12-days and 4 that were 18-days. From everything I had been able to find this was a death sentence. I spot candled a few and nothing,

I was just about to toss everything in the trash when I found an article on here about a similar circumstance. The basics of the article was to leave the eggs in, turn in back on and recheck in 2 days..

Every single 12 and 18 day made it and my hatch rates for the 2 and 7 day old eggs were normal. I was and am amazed. It's like I treat each egg like it is the most delicate creation on earth and then come face to face with how strong nature really is.

So, for those of who who experience a prolonged power outage, I would sure wrap up my incubator to keep it as warm as possible, but when power resumes plug it back it and give those babies a chance. They may very well surprise you!

Thank you for the information. My incubator was off for about that long. It contains the eggs of my little bitty Cochin mix that laid beautiful tiny green eggs. Today is day 19. I hope at least one or two hatch with girls. At least I have hope.