JANUARY HATCH-A-LONG come join in

[countrychics]

Quote:
awh that's soooooo sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[nhnanna]

The little silkiexfrizzle made it out at 11:30 pm last night so her official name is January.
Will try to post picture when she comes out of the hatcher.

 

[walkswithdog]

Woot the January Chicksicles have hatched, DESPITE a power failure on Saturday that dropped the incubator temps to 74 degrees! These are some cold Weather birds all right! Three hatched fairly strong and the fourth is weak but gaining strength now, all needed some help - outtages like that always make for weaker chicks at hatch after hours of burning their energy to stay alive just prior to hatch. I have begun to think of power outtages as the rule not the exception here. But I'm good at watching for the help they do need without hurting them. Between being near frozen when I found the eggs, and that power out, they really shouldn't have made it, but I have three more delawares and a black rock, Ice, Cube, Pop and Fudge - the Cicles.

 

[nhnanna]

walkswithdog, congrats on the little cicles.
I like those kind of surprises.

 

[Madcap621]

Congrats walkswithdogs!!!

LOVE those names!

Also want to add my personal thanks for your wonderfully supportive post a few days ago. Helped me thru' a hard couple of days!

January '10 now HISTORY! Many new peeps, many lessons learned, many great friends made across the country! ON TO FEBRUARY!!!

 

[Karrie13]

Well out of my 26 that made it to lockdown I have 6 live chicks after loosing one during the night (I didn't think it was going to make it anyway). I still have one egg in the bator that I candled this morning and saw movement, it internally pipped during the night. I am not sure what went wrong with this hatch, they were all silkies. I did open the eggs and had fully formed chicks most with yolks absorbed and pipped internally. The membrane was moist, humidity and temp was good throughout the incubation (except for one corner that was cooler) but they just didn't hatch. I am thinking that they just couldn't get their "domed" heads around to pip. I did have 5 that hatched without any problems at all so I am not 100% sure.

I was

each time I pulled out a fully formed dead chick. If only I had known and helped them out.

Does anyone else have problems hatching out silkies?

 

[Karrie13]

It took me a few days to get the pictures up but here are my 6 live chickies!

 

[walkswithdog]

They're adorable silkie babies. Usually that kind of fail to hatch is a ventilation issue. Enough humidity, not enough air exchange. No I haven't had that kind of late failure without some severe issue, like power loss or spike and the spike was to 134. Most last day failures are oxygenation/ventilation issues. If the chick is having any kind of trouble and needs more oxygen than an incubator running with average ventilation may be just a bit too little. Or if your humidity was too high, it deprives the chick of oxygen access. So check your hygrometer, recalibrate it so you know and when in doubt, if it's a foam bator, give the sucker another hole to pull air through. If it was still air, add a fan. Those are the things you can figure on tinkering with if late failure is an issue. Were the ones that hatched on time or late?

 

[Karrie13]

It is a forced air LG. I did have both vent plugs open during lockdown but not during incubation. I will add more ventilation and give that a shot too. I never did actually calibrate my hygrometer, just compared it to another one and they showed the same % so I will do that as well (maybe they were both wrong). During lockdown my humidity was ranging from 62% to 75% but during incubation it would be around 30% then I would add water and it would shoot up to 55% then slowly go back down. I wounder if that was part of the issue too. It did seem like some had larger air cells than others too.

For the ones that hatched, I had one on day 20.5, one on day 21, 3 on day 22 and one on day 23. The chick in the egg died last night at day 25.

 

[chickenmeadow]

Oh my, there's still stuff going on on this thread. Fun to see the silkie pics, adorable! Also, fun to hear about the latest chicks that had hatched in January.

walkswithdog: Thank you for mentioning the "ventilation" issue & also how excess "humidity" can effect the "oxygenation." Good point & reminder. I do "dry incubation" method. I must go home & add xtra holes in my 2nd incubator that I rarely use. Hmmmm... maybe that's why I don't consider it my luckiest incubator. Hope you post this issue on the February hatch thread like this one, please.

So glad I jumped back to this thread to see what's going on.