Lost power, chicks on heat.

[Kiki]

On another note, the two littles aren't eating or drinking and I've dipped their beaks. Their siblings are eating and drinking and they watch. Suggestions? I have ND but don't like to use it after a bad experience of a chick aspirating despite careful attention.

Try water.
I'm thinking you might have over heated them with the hand warmers. Temps in the 70s is not too cold for chicks.


Drops on the side of the beak...don't force anything.

 

[Cyprus]

Try water.
I'm thinking you might have over heated them with the hand warmers. Temps in the 70s is not too cold for chicks.


Drops on the side of the beak...don't force anything.

Overnight, the chicks had the option of covered handwarmer, older chicks or empty space. They chose older chicks.

 

[aart]

Yeah. Day 3 when power went out, transitioned to 4 during outage. I have some hope at least, because the Serama eggs are a little hard to see into. Brown shells.

So hard to say.....and 'dead' ones may just be infertile...rather than the power outage?

 

[Kiki]

I lost power recently during incubation...close to 8 hours.
The bator cooling off didn't hurt the eggs.
I won't ever worry about the bator cooling off for a few hours again.

 

[Cyprus]

I lost power recently during incubation...close to 8 hours.
The bator cooling off didn't hurt the eggs.
I won't ever worry about the bator cooling off for a few hours again.

It was an odd timing. Eggs were in an egg carton, having already gone 2 days without turning. I had just finished a staggered hatch.

So hard to say.....and 'dead' ones may just be infertile...rather than the power outage?

The for sure deads were the ones with clear blood rings. About 4 of those. Quite a few clears, but about 7 eggs were 10+ days old when set.

 

[Cryss]

Have you been able to get the babies to drink some ND by putting drops on the side of the beak yet?

 

[Cyprus]

Have you been able to get the babies to drink some ND by putting drops on the side of the beak yet?

No, I've been busy. I'll try that now.

 

[Cyprus]

No, I've been busy. I'll try that now.

Just gave each a tiny drop.

 

[aart]

Just gave each a tiny drop.

I use a soaked qtip held against side of beak.
Stroke under beak and front of throat to stimulate swallowing if needed.

 

[gtaus]

So crisis is over, thread is a little old now, but just showed up on an email to me, so I'm throwing out a possible solution for someone in the future. I have all my computers and TVs plugged into small battery UPS devices. When the power goes out, the UPS sounds an alarm and immediately switches over to battery. When the power is restored, the UPS switches back to mains, shuts off the alarm, and recharges the battery.

Even my smallest $40 UPS at 450 watts will run a computer system for about 20 minutes. That might not sound like much time, but it's more than enough for the computer to shut itself down properly if the power is not restored in 15 minutes. But computers are constantly running and sucking up electricity at a steady rate of about 400 watts.

How many watts is your incubator? I imagine there is a thermostat that turns on and off depending on the temp. Does the incubator draw any current when not heating? I would think that the heater is off most of the time if the incubator is well insulated. Maybe throw a blanket around the incubator just to help it if you needed more time. At any rate, I would think that even a small battery UPS could provide power to an egg incubator for what, hours? If you spend more money, you can buy larger battery UPS devices and increase your downtime protection. And yes, you can hack the UPS to use a car battery/batteries for almost unlimited running time (search YouTube videos).

I plan to incubate eggs someday and I will be plugging my incubator into a UPS, not so much for long term storm outage, but more probable is that my attached garage GFCI outlet trips and shuts off the power in the garage but the rest of the house is unaffected. I want an alarm on that power source, and if not home, want the battery backup feature of the UPS to kick in until I get home and reset the GFCI circuit.

Hope that UPS idea may help someone.