Issue where fully developed chick drowns instead of internal pipping

[szczur]

I've been having an issue where my chicks make it to day 21 but instead of internally pipping seem to die. Upon eggtopsy if I peel the membrane a ginger ale colored fluid comes out, but otherwise the chicks are at near full yolk absorption, mostly tiny veining on the membrane, not malpositioned, etc. The membrane was clear and not dried out on most of them when i opened it, maybe with a few wrinkles. I was using an amazon cheap incubator as a hatcher and I would see the temps fluctuate a bit on a thermometer placed in it, would this cause this issue? It seems only half to 3/4ths of them make it out of the end process

 

[junior67]

What temp and humidity do u keep it at? Do you use a calibrated hygrometer/thermometer in the incubator?

 

[HollowOfWisps]

What is your humidity at lockdown? If they are drowning at the end inside the egg it is because your humidity is too high.

 

[szczur]

What temp and humidity do u keep it at? Do you use a calibrated hygrometer/thermometer in the incubator?

100 F and 60-70 for hatch, before lockdown the dry method (usually around 30 percent humidity) I have a cheaper reptile thermometer/hygrometer in the incubator with the eggs to check against the incubator's thermometer. I could probably spring for a better one but I wasn't having this issue before. This particular incubator seems to have hot spots and cold spots depending on how close the eggs are to the incubator thermometer and how many eggs are in it, although it has a fan. I've seen temps jump up and down by 2 degrees in both directions, so that's my guess as to what's going on. The air cells are usually on the bigger end due to the dry hatch method, can they still drown from ambient humidity? Thanks for the responses!

 

[HollowOfWisps]

100 F and 60-70 for hatch, before lockdown the dry method (usually around 30 percent humidity) I have a cheaper reptile thermometer/hygrometer in the incubator with the eggs to check against the incubator's thermometer. I could probably spring for a better one but I wasn't having this issue before. This particular incubator seems to have hot spots and cold spots depending on how close the eggs are to the incubator thermometer and how many eggs are in it, although it has a fan. I've seen temps jump up and down by 2 degrees in both directions, so that's my guess as to what's going on. The air cells are usually on the bigger end due to the dry hatch method, can they still drown from ambient humidity? Thanks for the responses!

Going from dry hatch to 60-70% humidity is too much of a jump. I would try to keep it at 40-50% at lockdown for hatching. I dry hatch with the 40-50% at lockdown and my last batch was 100% hatch rate.

 

[szczur]

Going from dry hatch to 60-70% humidity is too much of a jump. I would try to keep it at 40-50% at lockdown for hatching. I dry hatch with the 40-50% at lockdown and my last batch was 100% hatch rate.

ok, I will def try that next time, fingers crossed!

 

[K0k0shka]

Going from dry hatch to 60-70% humidity is too much of a jump. I would try to keep it at 40-50% at lockdown for hatching. I dry hatch with the 40-50% at lockdown and my last batch was 100% hatch rate.

I dry hatch with 70% for lockdown and don't have problems. Once they start hatching, it goes above 90%, even. The jump doesn't matter at this point in the process, what matters is that they don't dry out once they pip the shell.

 

[HollowOfWisps]

I dry hatch with 70% for lockdown and don't have problems. Once they start hatching, it goes above 90%, even. The jump doesn't matter at this point in the process, what matters is that they don't dry out once they pip the shell.

The jump does matter when the chicks are drowning before hatch like in this case which is caused by the humidity being too high.

 

[K0k0shka]

The jump does matter when the chicks are drowning before hatch like in this case which is caused by the humidity being too high.

Lockdown is only a couple of days, not long enough to cause so much fluid buildup. Lots of fluid inside takes time, and means the egg hasn’t been losing moisture at the correct rate throughout incubation. It won’t suck extra water in if the humidity is high at the very end.