March hatch along

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Johderosa, I hope the rest of your little babies make it!

Here's an update for my first hatch. I accidentally posted it in the silkie thread, but no one over there even acknowledges (boy that word doesn't look right...) my existence.

Here's the progress so far: It's day 3/4 (?) here and I have visual development in almost all of my eggs. One had a blood ring (so I removed it), two had dark spots, but im not sure whats up with that. (The dark spots were where the egg was dirty on the outside) A few appeared to be clear but not quite infertile, so I left those in there. One egg was Cracked from the aquarium thermometer dropping on it,but still has good development going on so i left it alone.

This is so exciting!
Here's the egg that had the blood ring. After I took it out of the incubator it rolled onto the floor and bounced a few times. When candling I could see the insides being quite mobile, so I'm not sure if it was scrambled before or after I took it from the incubator.

Any advice or insights from the seasoned oldies (is that an adequate word for the opposite of a newbie?)
 
Last edited:
subhanalah said:
Johderosa, I hope the rest of your little babies make it!

Here's an update for my first hatch. I accidentally posted it in the silkie thread, but no one over there even acknowledges (boy that word doesn't look right...) my existence.

Here's the progress so far: It's day 3/4 (?) here and I have visual development in almost all of my eggs. One had a blood ring (so I removed it), two had dark spots, but im not sure whats up with that. (The dark spots were where the egg was dirty on the outside) A few appeared to be clear but not quite infertile, so I left those in there. One egg was Cracked from the aquarium thermometer dropping on it,but still has good development going on so i left it alone.

This is so exciting!
Here's the egg that had the blood ring. After I took it out of the incubator it rolled onto the floor and bounced a few times. When candling I could see the insides being quite mobile, so I'm not sure if it was scrambled before or after I took it from the incubator.

Any advice or insights from the seasoned oldies (is that an adequate word for the opposite of a newbie?)
Click to expand...
Thanks and keep us informed of your progress.
 
subhanalah said:
Johderosa, I hope the rest of your little babies make it!

Here's an update for my first hatch. I accidentally posted it in the silkie thread, but no one over there even acknowledges (boy that word doesn't look right...) my existence.

Here's the progress so far: It's day 3/4 (?) here and I have visual development in almost all of my eggs. One had a blood ring (so I removed it), two had dark spots, but im not sure whats up with that. (The dark spots were where the egg was dirty on the outside) A few appeared to be clear but not quite infertile, so I left those in there. One egg was Cracked from the aquarium thermometer dropping on it,but still has good development going on so i left it alone.

This is so exciting!


Here's the egg that had the blood ring. After I took it out of the incubator it rolled onto the floor and bounced a few times. When candling I could see the insides being quite mobile, so I'm not sure if it was scrambled before or after I took it from the incubator.





Any advice or insights from the seasoned oldies (is that an adequate word for the opposite of a newbie?)
Click to expand...

Sounds like it is coming along. Are they all silkie eggs?
 
johnderosa1 said:
Kassaundra, excellent post!!! Yea sometimes reading too much is your undoing . My current hatch is probably going to be my worst ever and I can point to reading one too many articles. I was hatching some BCMs from an excellent source and read a lot about dry hatching and decided to do a modified version.... Unfortunately my basement is very dry due to a heat pump water heater I installed. I was also reading about the dangers of not enough ventilation. I left the vents open this time due to the number of eggs i had at lock down. I also read that the humidity usually spikes when the eggs start hatching en mass... Well long story short, i wound up with sticky chicks in a relatively dry (well ventilated) incubator that weren't hatching en mass. Only eight pipped so far, three zipped and got out on their own, i helped 2 out... Fully zipped but too sticky and three that zipped but died while i was at work... Again too sticky to get out. I tried to get too fancy this time around and really screwed things up. I should have stuck to a simpler plan. Run them on the dry side through day 19 and then crank the humidity to the high side. Its worked in the past and it would have worked now. I haven't given up hope yet but it is likely that this hatch will go down as lessons learned
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear about your bad hatch. I just had one too. Two hatched out of six eggs. One fully developed but died in shell. It was my first staggered hatch so I think that had a lot to do with it. My hatch I'm doing right now is a dry hatch. Im keeping the humidity between 30 to 40 percent and leaving the vents in. I do plan on cranking up the humidity on day 18 to 70% though.
 
My goodness gracious! I hate hearing about the not so good runs....
I've always done dry incubation, I normally use no water until the 18th day when I lock them down, then I have a bowl I fill up and close the vents off. That gets me to 50% or so and the humidity climbs exponentially once the hatching begins. I've always had great hatch rates doing that, but this time I'm trying to improve that, even if only by one or two chicks.
This time I've been wetting a sponge and introducing some humidity during the first two weeks, but I've stopped that now as all the air cells look exactly right like I want them to look.
Another difference I made this time is I rinsed my eggs clean prior to setting, and it hasn't seemed to hurt anything, if not improved my results some. I've removed 5 eggs total of my 36 I set. 3 were clearly infertile, and two were early quitters, but I haven't had any blood rings this time, and I normally have one or two.
Also, I had the 7 hour power outage. My recorded low temp was 68 deg. and all 31 eggs I have left showed movement or sufficient development to prove they are all still viable.
The only other thing I intend to do different this time is when I lock them down I'm going to put a piece of paper in front of the fan so that air still circulates but won't blow directly on the eggs.
Johnderosa, I'm probably going to follow you now, because my heart hurts with you. I want to see you have a better hatch than that!
 
Thanks to all!!! I'm bummed but understand these things happen. I have already collected 8 eggs from my lavender ams and will set those with whatever i collect today and get right back on the horse.... I will be doing a staggered hatch this time so we will see how things go. I am optimistic that things will go much better this time. Overall my results in the past have been decent to excellent on viable eggs so i will chalk this up to being a little too clever and perhaps a little too complacent. I will do a thorough disinfection of the entire incubator, monitor the air cells more closely, add another thermometer as well as humidity gage. I was reading 10% when i was running it dry this time and assumed it wasn't working properly. I am thinking it was. The heat pump really dries the air out down there, i just never realized by how much.
 

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