March 2017! Hatch with us!

[lilwildrabbit]

Love it! The miracle bunch. We will all be telling this story for some time. Congrats!

Now I'm going to sleep its been a loooong night watching and waiting on that last chick to pop out and boy it did! When it popped out it hit the side of the incubator and scared me! Night everyone I will be back up later I'm on my next hatch the eggs are wiggling now!!

 

[orrpeople]

Ok so day 23 and still nothing i candled them past night and 4 were definitelt moving. But 2 out of the four seemed to have bigger chicks with the space in the egg a solid black mass. And the other two had a partial black dense area. The air sacs looked good but i dont understand why theyre development is different. Have i done something wrong?

This is one of those 'mystery solving' times where you try to go through all of your variables... temp, humidity, incubator fluctuations in either or both, quality of the eggs, etc. Once this episode is over, and you are sure they DIS (died in shell), be sure to eggtopsy them, looking for clues as well. Its kind of a heartbreaking process, but for the sake of future hatches, cover all your bases.
Almost always, the blame lies somewhere with the incubation technique - although rough handling of shipped eggs is a close second.
Bummed for you - I know this is not the way you wanted to begin.

 

[WVduckchick]

A pic from yesterday as the first few got moved to the brooder.

great job!

Well group photo shoot of my rescue hatch 11 eggs from my Dutch hen I still can't believe even One survived!! But here are the results of the rescue

So cute! Don't ya love the little chipmunks.

Ok so day 23 and still nothing

i candled them past night and 4 were definitelt moving. But 2 out of the four seemed to have bigger chicks with the space in the egg a solid black mass. And the other two had a partial black dense area. The air sacs looked good but i dont understand why theyre development is different. Have i done something wrong?

In the ones that just look like dense area, can you see any veins? I'm sorry, but I would guess those are likely quitters. I can't remember what breeds you had, but different breeds develop differently, and even the same breeds can, especially when the shell quality differs from hen to hen.

So day 23... anything is possible.... but I have seen quite a few that are fine, and quite a few that have issues from taking too long. Its a personal decision you need to think about at this point. If you continue and they hatch, what if they have issues that won't give them good quality of life? Can you cull?

I'm not saying this will happen, but its something to think about. Would it be easier to throw these out and start fresh? Or let it go and see what happens, knowing what it "may" come to?

This is one of those 'mystery solving' times where you try to go through all of your variables... temp, humidity, incubator fluctuations in either or both, quality of the eggs, etc. Once this episode is over, and you are sure they DIS (died in shell), be sure to eggtopsy them, looking for clues as well. Its kind of a heartbreaking process, but for the sake of future hatches, cover all your bases.
Almost always, the blame lies somewhere with the incubation technique - although rough handling of shipped eggs is a close second.
Bummed for you - I know this is not the way you wanted to begin.

x2 good advice. My guess is temperature too low throughout incubation.

 

[Jennn27]

I'm in...a little late, mind you. Hahaha I have 8 new hatchlings that just hatched 36 hours ago, and a few more to go in about a week, along with two duck eggs.

 

[angelobutter]

Kind of forgot to read along, but I have an update on my eggs. Added a few more, and candled everyone. what is left from my original 23 silkie eggs I have 10. Not great but they are shipped eggs and cold weather so not completely unexpected.
My kid had picked names for the eggs, so we still have: Flower, Rooster, Christine, Banana Honey, Banana Block, Elephant, Cracker, Tree Egg, Eggy, and Sweetie.
Also I love my candler. I did a test and candled the eggs at 3 days and separated what looked good and what didn't show any signs of development (obviously not chucking anything at this point) and then candled again at 7 days to see how accurate I was at 3 days... only one wrong! not bad.
Unfortunately this didn't make me too happy because I added 17 modern game bantam eggs on the 10th and when I candled them at 5 days only two of them looked to have any development. But I will check again later and hopefully it was just too early to see.
Right now all the eggs are in my Rcom50 but I plan on moving the silkie eggs to my Rcom10 for lockdown in a couple days so I have room to join the easter hatch a long in the big incubator.
Now to backtrack 65 pages and read how everyone else's hatch is going

 

[yeye5]

Well group photo shoot of my rescue hatch 11 eggs from my Dutch hen I still can't believe even One survived!! But here are the results of the rescue

That's one big bunch of cute chicks for eggs that were freezing! Go chicks!

 

[yeye5]

Well since everyone here held my hand thru my hatch/chick meltdown, I have sweet news to report.
Little Itsy is still doing great and s/he has adopted, oh, let's see...5 Brahma 2 week olds and 2 surprise GLWs that were next to the Brahmas at the feed store.
So, yesterday I got abducted by the chicken mathematician!
My dog Tank just happened to be in the car bcs he had a routine doc visit then went with me to fill his Rx (maintenance med, no drama there), then we stopped at the feed store...Tank gets "set off" by unusual noises. Um, 7 chicks in 2 carry boxes make loud unusual noises! So we drove home with talk radio really loudly playing to cover the peeping sounds, thus keeping Tank in the back seat and the peeps in front. Tank ate my seat belt but to be fair he only finished it yesterday. He's been working on it a good couple of years.
We (all) got home around 5:30 for what was a successful yet speedy intro to Mima who adopted them all! Immediately. I couldn't put chicks in fast enough to see each one climbing up into her feathers!
She clucked a lot. So I clucked a lot.
So the whole cluckin' bunch of us were very very happy!
I was also nervous bcs surprise winter-in-spring was extended one more night. My timing,...is just...
This morning at daybreak, I grab the flashlight. I'd been reading up on the new Brahmas, still to look up the Wyandottes I already have.
Just as soon as there was enough light between dawn and the flashlight to see each chick, not drop it, count each, deposit it briefly in the carry box, all were accounted for and doing well, I quickly clonked them back into the nest.
Mima is tapping her foot thinking "humans are so weird...do you think I could try to train her?"
and I closed up the nest and went on.
Happy.

 

[WVduckchick]

Well since everyone here held my hand thru my hatch/chick meltdown, I have sweet news to report.
Little Itsy is still doing great and s/he has adopted, oh, let's see...5 Brahma 2 week olds and 2 surprise GLWs that were next to the Brahmas at the feed store.
So, yesterday I got abducted by the chicken mathematician!
My dog Tank just happened to be in the car bcs he had a routine doc visit then went with me to fill his Rx (maintenance med, no drama there), then we stopped at the feed store...Tank gets "set off" by unusual noises. Um, 7 chicks in 2 carry boxes make loud unusual noises! So we drove home with talk radio really loudly playing to cover the peeping sounds, thus keeping Tank in the back seat and the peeps in front. Tank ate my seat belt but to be fair he only finished it yesterday. He's been working on it a good couple of years.
We (all) got home around 5:30 for what was a successful yet speedy intro to Mima who adopted them all! Immediately. I couldn't put chicks in fast enough to see each one climbing up into her feathers!
She clucked a lot. So I clucked a lot.
So the whole cluckin' bunch of us were very very happy!
I was also nervous bcs surprise winter-in-spring was extended one more night. My timing,...is just...
This morning at daybreak, I grab the flashlight. I'd been reading up on the new Brahmas, still to look up the Wyandottes I already have.
Just as soon as there was enough light between dawn and the flashlight to see each chick, not drop it, count each, deposit it briefly in the carry box, all were accounted for and doing well, I quickly clonked them back into the nest.
Mima is tapping her foot thinking "humans are so weird...do you think I could try to train her?"
and I closed up the nest and went on.
Happy.

Sweet! Some hens are very accepting, some are not. I've slipped chicks under a hen at night and found it dead in the morning. But another one, I gave chicks to her in open daylight and she gladly took them in. Glad Mima is a good one!

And psssst... FYI.... you can't tell a story like that without PICS!! Guess we have to train you too.!

 

[orrpeople]

@WVduckchick I need your malpo advice! 2 of my non shipped eggs had badly malpositioned pips. One DIS because it happened at night and apparently caught membrane across its beak (I know that when they malpo, they don't get that vital first breath, so they're fairly oxygen starved). The other, I caught in time and enlarged its hole so the beak has lots of room. I even chipped a little shell so that when/if it zips, it has a little head start. My question is, will malpos zip like normal chicks, or will they need constant help? I have only had one before this - I helped it, but sadly had to euthanize it because of a significant deformity (hence, why it was malpositioned.)

 

[WVduckchick]

@WVduckchick I need your malpo advice! 2 of my non shipped eggs had badly malpositioned pips. one DIS because it happened at night and apparently caught membrane across its beak (I know that when they malpo, they don't get that vital first breath, so they're fairly oxygen starved). The other, I caught in time and enlarged its hole so the beak has lots of room. I even chipped a little shell so that when/if it zips, it has a little head start. my question is, will malpos zip like normal chicks, or will they need constant help? I have only had one before this - I helped it, but sadly had to euthanize it because of a significant deformity (hence, why it was malpositioned.)

I have seen many make it all on their own. Just went toward the wrong end for no apparent reason. So I suggest giving it time to try on its own. And remember, even extra time, since they miss the air cell, the first hours are like the time that normal pippers spend breathing the internal air. They do a lot of absorbing during that time. So chipping them out too soon can be bad. Just watch for the membrane to get brown-ish. Even though we don't see them move a lot, they normally move enough to keep the membrane moist. Paper-white to gray-ish wet is what you want to see. When it gets yellow to brown, they aren't moving enough and the membrane starts drying, and sticks to the feathers.

Big holes vs little holes... I'd rather see them with a nice, open, small hole, with just a beak in it. Big holes tend to let more air in (especially in incubators with fans), and speed up the drying out process. You want them to stay moist and not get stuck. So as long as they have breathing room, a bigger hole doesn't really help.

But, if it starts to dry out, you may have to do the zip, remove the membrane, and let him push himself out.

Curious... Do you incubate with them laying down or upright? I think ones that are laid down tend to be malpo more often, and especially more rounded eggs. But that's just my thinking and wondering.