Intervention: Helping Your Chicks Hatch

[chickenworld]

You have probably saved the lives of four of my first chicks...THANK YOU!!

 

[jdypat]

I just had 8 eggs hatch under a hen. Amazing and a miracle. She SAT while we built a hen house around the hen house that I started out with. Then one day I found her sitting in the nest beside her eggs. The eggs were cold. Very cold.
but I put her back on her nest and decided to see what happened.
Monday four of the eggs hatched. Leaving eight under her. After 3 days I removed the eggs and put them in an incubator. Four of th em hatched. I opened the others and found dead chicks at various stages.
But I have 8 of the pretties little aranaconas and one of something else.. and Im very pleased at her work.

BUT she wont accept the four that hatched out in the house. She almost blinded one of them before I realized what was going on. It s head is pecked badly, but it is doing better. The eyes were in bad shape. could not open them. I kept them wet but the tissue under the eye is damaged and I dont know what is to come.
As of 6am IT is up and eating and drinking so i guess the worse is over. jdy

 

[tazzy]

oh, I'm so glad I saw this post this morning. It definitely saved the lives of at least two of our chicks. they had pipped but hadn't gotten through the tough membranes and so we assisted and saved two of the chicks but one had already smothered to death. we did "zippers" on the other eggs that had pipped and this evening we now have eight healthy chicks and we've only lost two chicks. and one has its beak out and we did a zipper on that shell, too, and hope to wake up to nine healthy chicks in the morning.

thanks for this post and thread. it's VERY helpful!!!!!

 

[Davaroo]

I dont know if anyone said it, but this bears mentioning.

The inability to hatch, or weak hatching, to the point that you have to help CAN be an inherited trait. If so, this is not good.

Poor hatching ability is a possible sign of poor overall vigor of both the offspring and within the parent stock itself. There are reasons for this occurring and again, 'tis a bad thing to have in a flock.

The whole "Survival of the Fittest" thing is what we're talking about here. Chickens have a tough life in a harsh world. Your kindly intervention could be doing more harm than good, in the end.

If these concerns override your need to be helpful, humane or whatever you choose to call it, think twice about helping out.

 

[klf73]

I read this and thought I should help my pip. It had been almost 24 hours since it pipped and I was concerned. There was a reason it didn't do anything else yet. It hadn't even started to absorb it's yolk and died shortly after I opened it a little. The next one after that pipped and I left it alone, it took more than 24 hours after pip but once it started to actually zip it did it quickly. Although this may save some, I won't be doing it again, I felt horrible that I tried to rush it and it would have probably been ok had I just left it alone. All the rest after took long, but they all got themselves out.
Krista

 

[HeavenOnEarth]

We are first time incubators doing a 4H project. We found this great advise while trying to decide if we should intervene on behalf of our chicks that had stopped progressing after pipping through their shells.

We were reluctant to intervene since we had the impression that it was non-Darwinian to help the chicks out of their shells, but we reasoned that we were to blame (albeit unintentionally) since the conditions in the incubator weren't right.

We ended up helping 5 chicks hatch using this method. The only egg in the clutch that pipped but died was the one that we didn't assist. (That was the one that prompted us to find this forum.) I'm certain that under a mother hen all the eggs would have hatched without problems, and I'm also certain the 5 we helped would have died of exhaustion if we hadn't intervened.

Once the assisted chicks dried off we put them in the brooder box and now we can't tell any difference between the 6 that hatched naturally and the 5 that we helped. There are some pictures of the process and outcome at http://assistedhatching.shutterfly.com/

Thank you very much for the timely advice.

 

[meshil]

Hi,
When your hen gives egg collect those eggs,
and keep that eggs in bowl filled with sand or ash and place that eggs on it and make hen to sit in it for 21 days put food to hen there itself.
===========================================
meshil
Addiction Recovery Arkansas
Addiction Recovery Arkansas

 

[Anne]

In my experience, trying to help a chick out is usually a mistake.

The only time I didn't regret doing it is when I had a chick that pipped at the wrong end of the egg, and I waited a LOOOOOOONG time to make sure he was ready before helping him.

But generally speaking, I don't think there are many good reasons to "help" a chick hatch.

After YEARS of refusing to "help" chicks hatch (due to bad experiences "helping" eggs hatch when I was a kid) I finally gave in (against my better judgement!) and "helped" two eggs this spring.

The first had started hatching, had gotten almost 3/4 around the egg, then stopped. Since it was a late hatcher I thought maybe the poor thing simply didn't have enough energy to finish. It was an egg that I REALLY wanted to hatch, so I decided I would "help" it. BAD choice! The chick knew EXACTLY what it was doing -- it had stopped hatching because the yolk sack wasn't absorbed! It died several hours after I "helped" it. I felt absolutely terrible!

Another egg had been pipped for over 2 days, but showed no sign of hatching, and the peeps coming from within were getting steadily weaker, so I "helped" it. Again, big mistake -- it was blind in both eyes, had a deformed skull, and its legs were crippled beyond repair.

As a kid I helped eggs hatch that genuinely needed it, as the chicks really were too weak. Initially I prided myself, but later these birds were poor layers, got sick easily, and died early. They were weak birds and (perhaps this sounds cruel to some) probably should have died when they couldn't get out of the shell.

I'm sure plenty of people have "helped" their chicks hatch to great success, and ended up with birds that were perfectly healthy. But somehow I suspect in many of these cases, the "helping" was probably less necessary than percieved, and the chick was simply getting ready to hatch anyhow.

I'm not trying to put anyone down or say that anyone is wrong, but I do feel that I need to say something. Anyhow, these are my experiences and I hope people read it and take these things into account before trying to "help" their chicks hatch.

 

[sara]

Anne~ I agree with you 100%. The times I have been dumb enough to go against my better judgement and help have been disasters. It can take a long time for a chick to hatch, patience is key, and if they don't hatch they shouldn't.

 

[Katy]

I agree totally too. There's almost always a reason for them not being able to hatch on their own.