Need Advice: Abandoned Eggs, Now in Incubator

[skullgrrrl]

I had a hen sitting on eggs for the last 7 days. We've had a bit of a heatwave here and I think she decided to leave the eggs. It may have happened last night or this morning and there was nothing I could do for them till this evening (due to that dratted thing called work).

When I got home she was off the eggs. She perched over them so some of them have varying amounts of poop crusted on them. I don't have another broody hen at the moment (where are they when you need them? I've had 17 so far this season). I borrowed an incubator and the eggs are in there now. I left the poop as I couldn't rub it off.

I'm not too hopeful for the survival of the embryos but I wanted to hear if other people had experiences of eggs that had stop being incubated for a period of time, but survived to hatch healthy chicks.

I figure worst case scenario she may have been off the eggs for 24 hrs, best 12 hrs. I figure the overnight temps were 20c (68f) and the daytime got to 33c (93f), but the coop might have been even higher. I don't want chicks to survive that have birth defects due to spikes in temp or humidity.

I am inexperienced at using an incubator and candling. I will candle them in a couple of days to see if anything has survived. Any advice?

 

[sawilliams]

Just be patient and prepared. I have hard eggs kicked out of the nest as well as lost power to the incubator for unknown amounts of time. Some hatch some dont. They may be late hatches.

 

[HuskerHens18]

In the dead of winter I had a broody abandon her eggs. They were cold to the touch so I carried them from the coop to the house in my shirt, in -10°F weather. Out of 5, 2 hatched just fine.

Go ahead and incubate, I'd candle in maybe 3 or 4 days.
Blood rings mean they've died, it's a line of blood formed inside the egg.
If there is nothing you can see, it's an infertile egg or earlier death.

Look for veins and movement, that's your beacon of hope they'll be okay.