Need some insight *WARNING- Graphic picture*

[AmandaAnne]

These 3 babies were 4 days over due, there had been no peeping coming from them for 3 days, so I pulled them from the incubator, candled them, seen no movement at all & while I wish I would've just left well enough alone, I couldnt. I went ahead and pipped the eggs, still nothing, so I then very carefully started pulling the shell back until I could get the babies out. Im sure I did at a minimum 10 things wrong by doing this, but I had to know what went wrong!
now I have 3 DOA babies & still no clue as to why. I'm very hopefully someone on here can give me some insight. I know one of the babies head was no where near the air sac (not sure if that matters) 1 of the babies had a very deformed head & all 3 babies looked to me as if their intestines were outside of their bodies, (hence the graphic picture) but that could be my untrained eye, just not knowing what their rumps should look like.
I really am desperate to know what went wrong! I have a still air incubator, with an automatic turner, they were not handled, other than being candled 3 times, day 5, day 15 & day 19 right before lock down, temp & humidity stayed steading at 99.5 & 55%, until lock down, then I raised humidity to 70%. Were did I go wrong?!
Im just heart broken over it! However, I dont want my 1st post to be all sad. I do have 1 happy little bouncing baby chick.

 

[Kelsie2290]

So sorry about the chicks and the bad hatch, it is so disappointing when things go wrong.. Have you seen the really nice Hatching article in the Learning Center? https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/hatching-eggs-101 One thing is with a still air incubator you actually want to be incubating at 101.5 -102 degrees rather than the 99.5 for a forced air... in a still air the top of the egg is warmer than the bottom, and still airs are more likely to have cold spots in the incubator ... cooler temperatures will delay the hatch / slow down development, so that maybe part of what happened to these.
Here is a nice link that covers a lot of the things that can cause chick deformities.
http://www.beautyofbirds.com/chickdeformiities.html

 

[AmandaAnne]

Thank you so much!! I will definitely take a look at that. I went off the incubator instructions. Stupid me!
I've creeped this forum for a very long time, but never signed up because 9 times out of 10 I had found the answers to my questions by reading others posts.