Intervention: Helping Your Chicks Hatch

[banter]

Little Dipper is born! I had to intervene, but so far so good She is very strong, fully formed and drying off right now. She (?) was the smallest egg, and I think she was packed in so tight she couldn't move to work her way around the egg. She shook, rattled and rolled (and peeped too!) so I decided since it was 12 hours, and she was getting nowhere I would help. It only took 5 minutes! The membrane seemed really thick and rubbery to me, but came off with just a very small amount of blood. I
I have another egged pipped and peeping, and 5 which have not start yet.
Thanks for all the great advice!

 

[mammachucky]

Hi there,

This is my first message, so please bear with me if I am doing this wrong. Lasy year we bought our three kids a chicken each to keep at our allotment, and we were hooked, I bought my two girls age 10 and 11 an incubator for christmas and we successfully hatched four silkies on boxing day, it was fantastic!! Since then we have bought a cockrel and hatched some of our own eggs and have two more named faith (had to get this one out of shell) and speckles. We then bought two white Campbell call ducks and she had started laying so we put in 6 eggs. Two died early on but the other four were due today. Candled them they had pipped through there air sacs on Thursday and were cheeping, stopped turning them and dropped temp by 1 degree, by friday they had stopped moving and cheeping!! Thought maybe they would run out of air so made a little hole in the end. Duckling still and not breathing same in all eggs. EHat do you think I have done wrong, anything else I should have done. Kids were devestated. Starting another set of seven off today!!

 

[frankie5316]

this is one of the best and most detailed pieces of informatioon ive read on this site. but i have one question. why does the membrane bleed and why is it bad?

 

[GracefulBantams]

When/if the membrane bleeds, it means that the chick is not quite ready to hatch yet - it is still getting oxygen from the blood. Once the chick becomes able to full breath on its own by just using its lungs, the blood dries up.

 

[MTtroutwithwings]

Has anyone ever had to pip an egg for a chick who has been wiggling & peeping for over 24 hrs, is on day 22, but has not pip the egg themselves? If so, how?

 

[hypnofrogstevie]

I am stilltrying to figure out how to pip the membrane without it bleeding? One duck broke the membrane with its beak and its bleeding.

 

[hinkjc]

You should never pip through the membrane. If they are not in the air cell, they are not ready to hatch.

Jody

 

[hypnofrogstevie]

Thanks jody.

 

[mandy4]

Hello- I am new at this!! Yay!! I have 13 new chicks!! They all hatched fine but there is still one that has pipped a good size hole and has a white membrane showing and some bloody spots on it.
So What should I do?? Should I do the tweezer thing and help them get out? But then I wasn't sure about the membrane.. can anyone help?

 

[jdypat]

I would get him out of there.. keep him warm..and avoid the blood veins.. when/if you see blood leave it alone.. go to another spot.
go slowly and keep him warm.