I put over 2 doz silkie eggs in my cabinet incubator on Monday, and today when i went to check the water level today i noticed it was blowing cool air and was only 80 degrees in the bator. I have gone out a bought a Styrofoam incubator until i can save up to either get a new cabinet bator r get mine fix. My question is will the eggs still develop and hatch it was 80 degrees its not like it was 30 degrees in there. I was just wondering if i was wasting my time putting them in another incubator or not, Im not sure where the incubator stopped working but it had to be between monday and today. any thoughts would be great thank you for any input or advice
Unless you know exactly how long they were cold it's impossible to tell. The only thing I can suggest is to keep them going in the new incubator and candle them on Monday. If you don't see development, wait and candle again on Thursday. You should see some development by then. If not, it's up to you if you want to toss them and start over or give them a bit more time. Basically you should be able to tell if an egg is developing by candling on day 7. But in your situation the eggs may not have been developing because of the cold and will only get going now that they are warm again. Or they may have been developing, but got slowed down a bit with the cooler temps. 80 is cold, but not cold enough to kill them. Unfortunately Monday will be the earliest you can really tell. There may be viable embryos in there and it is possible that you caught the problem not long after it happened.
It purely depends on how long the heat was off and if development ever really started. Thanks, Sumi, I never thought about that. Those eggs are a lot tougher than many people think. The core temperature inside the egg does not cool off nearly as fast as the air temperature. I have no idea if the eggs are any good any longer or not. I'd suggest trying it and candling in a few days to see if there is any further development.
