Day 12 yesterday, power went out from a storm for 3 hours. I was out of town so DH put a blanket over the incubator to get the temp back up after it went down to 86 degrees. That shot the humidity up to 65% when I got home last night. I turned up the thermostat a hair this morning to get temp corrected and when I got home from work the temp is at 106 degrees and the humidty went down to 33%!!! What chances is there of these eggs hatching and if they do, is there going to be any problems with deformities etc.? Should I give up on them or hope for the best? I really don't want to proceed if they are going to end up hatching with major problems.
Oh my goodness, I've had the same thing happen. Last year I had a batch of 12 eggs in the bator and we lost power for about 4 hours! It ended up killing the percentage that hatched but I did end up with 2. Good luck!
This is my 2nd time trying to hatch. First time I had 12 and two hatched from shipped eggs. This time I have shipped eggs again but only 8. Did your two that hatched come out ok? Thanks for the good luck wishes!! I think I'm gonna need it!
All you can really do is wait a few days and candle to see what they are doing. Here is some info incase you loose power again: Info on power outages during Incubation. From- A Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow The more valuable your hatching eggs are, the more likely it is that the electricity will go out during incubation. If you have an uninterruptable power source (UPS) for your computer or other electronic equipment, consider disconnecting the usual equipment and using the UPS to power your incubator. If the outage comtinues beyond its capacity to keep your incubator running, or you don't have an UPS, open the incubator and let the eggs cool until the power goes back on. Trying to keep the eggs warm is likely to cause abnormal embryo development. Furthermore, if you close the vents or wrap the incubator with blankets in your attempt to keep eggs warm, a greater danger than temperature loss is oxygen deprivation. Developing embryos use up oxygen rather rapidly, and the oxygen level may soon fall below that necessary to keep them alive. As soon as the power goes back on, close the incubator and continue operating it as usual. The effect of the outage on your hatch will depend on how long the power was out and on how long the eggs had been incubated before the outage. A power failure of up to 12 hours may not significally affect the hatch (except to delay it somewhat), especially if the outage occurred during the early incubation, when cooled embryos naturally tend to go dormant. Embryos that are close to term generate enough heat to carry them through a short-term outage.
