Nurfsmom
Songster
/hugs So sorry you have lost some of your babies.This may be comical or this may be heartbreaking, it has been both for me.
I just had the most horrifying incubator hatching (in my experience).
I have 2 ThermoPro hygrometers and a mercury thermometer that I use in my incubator. My incubator is a simple HovaBator. This has worked like a charm many times. I'm no pro at incubation, I don't do it all the time, just when my friends and family want some of my chickens offspring. I don't even sell the chicks.
Anyway, my first incubation was a great success, all that followed were as to be expected. A few losses, nothing super traumatic.
This time around, may be my last time, forever.
In my incubator I placed 30 eggs.
10 - Polish
10 - Silkie/Satin cross
15 - Black Silkie
Both of my hygrometers were inaccurate. Yes, we did calibrate them. Wet bulb and something my husband read about to use as a comparison also.
We don't know what happened but my humidity was way too low, the whole 18 days and at lockdown also, apparently. (Had NO idea).
So, time to watch the hatching begin, right - WRONG!
Lots of chirping, wiggling, tiny little pips and nothing more for hours and hours.
Finally, I opened the top and it just didn't feel right..
I don't know what it was.. just something different this time.
I picked up an egg, heard a chick chirping faintly..
I scratched my fingernail across the egg. My heart sank and skipped 3 beats, did some somersaults and barely found rhythm for a long few seconds...
I immediately knew something was bad wrong.
I took my fingernail and chipped away some of the tiny pieces of shell at the pip.
It was dry, arid, almost how feeling and by this time so was I.
I didn't have time to call my husband in the room where the incubator was. I just started to carefully, not so slowly, pull away the shell. What I saw stunned me for a few seconds. No, I did not think one second about taking photos. All I could think about was this one little chick in this shell.the membrane was NOT broken.
At this point, I had never heard of "shrink wrapped" or "sticky" chick event..
Well, I managed to get it out. No bleeding, because there was no blood left in the veins. No yolk to absorb, there was no yolk sac. It had already been absorbed.
Confused by this, I run to my trusted BYC app. OMG..
Panic mode sets in.
MaMa Bear mode takes over..
I did see 3 eggs that had bigger pips, could see the beaks, could see them barely moving, barely chirping.
No time to waste. I started picking away at these eggs first. It seemed like forever. I finally got 4 chicks removed from their potential tomb with no bleeding. Thank God, I had some Coconit oil and Qtips in the house.
After I felt safe to relax, I opened the incubator back up and looked at most all the eggs.
All of them that I picked up had the small tiny pips and no hole to the beaks.
I did some hard praying, got my nerve up and I just opened every egg. I safely removed 28 chicks, 2 of which, I did break a vein and yes, sadly, those 2 chicks died. One of those 2 chicks looked like it would have perished after it hatched, if it could have hatched... Now, looking back, the 2 eggs with veins, I guess, were not dried up. But still, I didn't know. I felt terrible and I cried, alot.
I stayed up all night with these eggs and chicks. Next day, there were a few that died along the way.. Can't say if it was because of me or not. They may have never hatched without my help. They may have hatched and died anyway, who knows. All I know is I did what I thought was best for my whole 30 chicks.
Today, which is complete, full day #2, after the horrific opening night..
I have a total of 23, seem to be thriving chicks. One has splayed legs and I have hobbled it, I don't know if it will survive or not, it's not trying to move around much.
Two more have one splayed leg and looks like they may fix it themselves. They are keeping up with the rest of them pretty well.
All of these chicks look *to me* like they are much smaller than any chicks I have ever incubated. Maybe I'm just jaded over this whole situation, I don't know....
I still am not positive if this was "shrink wrap" or "sticky".
It don't really matter at this point. I truly feel I will never incubate eggs again - ever.
This broke my heart in so many ways. All because of my error and relying on hygrometers to give me assurance that everything's alright inside the incubator.
I may lose a few more chicks and if I do, I will cry some more.
I swear, on my soul, I did everything I knew possible that I could do to save every one of these chicks.
It's a miracle that ANY of these chicks survived. I'm thankful they did.
That's all.
Yall be nice to me in the comments. This 51 year old woman has had a rough weekend.
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