Incubators Anonymous

[ozexpat]

I am sorry but I have been dry hatching for years and it seems to work out better for me as for the hatch rate really is higher then with high
humidity and here in the desert getting the humidity up is very difficult at best so as I like to say to each there own

indeed each their own

Your needs in Death Valley are very different to others so its important to include that - just as mine are the extreme opposite

 

[sillycmoy]

Okay, stupid question… well first off my 2nd hatch went awesome! I have 5 babies, and 4 that are pipped and 2 that are still wiggling, the others not so sure. Anyways. When do I take the out of the brooder, and do I give them food and water right away or wait a few hours.

thanks

 

[DMRippy]

Okay, stupid question… well first off my 2nd hatch went awesome! I have 5 babies, and 4 that are pipped and 2 that are still wiggling, the others not so sure. Anyways. When do I take the out of the brooder, and do I give them food and water right away or wait a few hours.

thanks

Hum.... Take them out when they are all dried off and fluffed out. I put their beak in water as soon as I put them in the brooder.... they find the feed just fine.

 

[Turkeytruff]

Thanks everyone. I was feeling a bit guilty taking out the 7 healthy chicks after 24 hours, and risking the last egg that had been pipped for over 24 hours. I did just that, took out the 7 quickly and left the one pipped in there overnight. Next morning it hadn't done anything, so I opened it a bit and it was chirping so I tried helping it out and I think the inner white was a bit shrunk in the air space area against the chick, but his head was out and it was breathing. I felt so bad, like I should have not let the other 7 out, and perhaps this one would have hatched. After inspection and picking away some of the shell along the top I could see the chick clearly had not stopped the circulatory system since the blood veins were still there and bled a bit. So, I stopped and put it back in the bator for another 6 hours, nothing happened and the chick just layed in there. I could see it breathing the whole time. Then, I read the entire BYC article about helping out a chick and did that and discovered this chick had never taken in the yolk. It died soon after. I went into mourning that whole day like it was all my fault. I told myself I am never "helping" a chick out ever again. Has anyone else had this experience with helping a chick?

10 days ago I had 2 BCM eggs that pipped day 23/24. After listening to them externally pip for 18 hours without any change I took them out (the membranes were drying out even though the humidity in the Brinsea was 65%) and finished unzipping them.
One poor little guy was twisted and never managed to untwist his wry neck - he was a large chick and maybe just hadn't lost enough moisture and grew too large in his shell- I gave him Poly vit and syringe fed him electrolyte water every couple of hours for 5 days and even got a bit of food down him but he died and I felt horrible & wondered at how much pain he was in. The other one was the tiniest BCM I ever saw - smaller than bantam chicks - and had a malformed foot and couldn't lift himself up and zipped around and also died after a week despite lots of hand feeding and watering. I don't have enough experience to know which ones might make it and my RN training gets in the way I guess. So I hear what all of you are saying - hands off for 24 hours. Watch out for the late ones in unzipping. And try not to beat yourself up for not being able to save them .. Hard to learn that one sometimes....

Dry incubation you just don't add water the first 18 days... I don't think there is a range of humidity to hit at either end. You have to find what works for you. No water works for me through most of the year. When I had higher humidity I could not hatch my Marans eggs at all... they hatch like popcorn now.

What do you think your humidity actually is for your Marans eggs.... I find them very tempermental!

 

[DMRippy]

Quote: I try to keep it under 35%. In the summer that is very hard to do here. Right now the humidity is so low it is not registering.

 

[Runawaylobster]

Quote:
I think many people set weekly, I know I do. Would you attribute your need to set every 4 days to the climate as opposed to the general age of the eggs. I keep mine indoors in air conditioning but they are usually at about 75F. I am getting good hatch rates usually, often 95-100% but the hatches are spread out over longer than 24 hours. I am wondering if a lower storage temperature would keep the hatching time to a shorter period.? It would be hard for me to keep them at a lower temperature and the wine fridge is configured poorly for eggs because i can't turn them in there easily. (and besides i would have to evict the wine ......) PS: I am getting winter RH measurements of about 18-20% and in the summer in the thirties, even indoors in AC.

 

[choptank330]

Thank you all so much for the help

 

[Renee97038]

Turkey's ruff,
Thanks for your story about late hatchers. Now I feel much better knowing I am not the only one who has had a sad experience over this.

 

[sillycmoy]

So I have 10 babies right now, still waiting on a mix and a Silkie. So excited. First hatch Thanks everyone for all the support and my stupid questions. I ended up with 6 Silkies, 3 Naked Neck Mixes and 3 Icelandic Mixes.

Here is a few photos from when I stuck them in the brooder

 

[klj491]

My little duckling is so goofy. I got home and was so worried he'd be dead. Nope, but he was glued to the towel I'm using in the brooder. Had put some honey in his water yesterday to try to help him out, and I guess I used too much cause he had apparently taken a swim in it and then gotten stuck to the towel. He got a warm bath with a touch of dish soap to get the honey off, I towel dried him and now he's sitting under the lamp again. Does anyone have any experience with Indian runner babies? Any time he tries to stand all the way up on his feet he ends up falling over. He's doing a lot of rolling over backwards and getting stuck on his back until he can figure out how to roll himself back over again.