Hi, just checking in. I'm actually frustrated right now. I candled all my eggs-granted its day 6, but 12 eggs are Trader Joe fertile eggs, and 9 of them have huge healthy chicks growing in them, and 3 clear but I'll leave those in til day 11 just for the sake of it. And then, I candled my 2 Pheonix eggs and 3 Yokohama eggs, and not one of them are fertile. They're completely see-through. I'm not sure what to think-I'm trying to think of all the senarios for the eggs to not be fertile at all. To start with, I ordered them through mail and the packaging wasn't good, then the postman was apparently an egg hater because he gave the box an extra toss and roll when giving it to me, and the box had 3 broken eggs in it, leaking...so already that was a bad start.
Can someone give me all the rational reasons the eggs wouldn't be fertile and growing chicks at all, because I don't want to accuse the seller of not giving me fertile eggs without exploring all the options first, you know?
Other than that, its a complete miracle that any of the eggs are okay. Last hatching I had the incubator in the living room so I could reasonably monitor the temp and that worked well, but this time I started the incubator in the garage (at the request of the family not wanting a bright light in the living room)-first 2 days it stayed stable with no eggs in it, and after the eggs were placed in it, the temps were crazy. It would shoot up to 110, then down to 96 and no matter what I couldn't control it. So I moved it that day back to the living room and its been great. I certainly thought I wouldn't see even one egg alive and kicking, but 9 TJ's are doing fantastic and actually look bigger inside than I expected.
I'm a little nervous now because I got all excited and ordered 6+ Crevecoeurs in a couple weeks. I know, it was too soon...but I was thinking I probably didn't have any good eggs anymore since the temps and bad mail experience and all.
I will say though, the last batch I incubated, I made the home made incubator. It was a test run all the way to hatching, and the temps shot up and down more than a degree, and the humidity was terrible. But I had 16 healthy eggs until the end, when I couldn't figure out how to get the humidity up. So I hope it helps to know that sometimes the temp changes won't hurt the eggs...but I don't know if some breeds are more fragile than other either.
Hope all is well.
