new babies..but some problems!

[Siamesesage]

Hi, hope someone knows answer tothis? Just read the post from Hinks about helping out..

Eggs started pipping and unzipping the shell two days ago (2 days early).. we let it go.. then..had one baby, stop zipping.. watched and it was having problems ripping that inner membrane.. so.. intervened.. carefully pulled back a little of membrane; baby eventually came out on its own.. it was funny to watch.. everytime I shined light into bator, chick would stick head and neck out of hole and seem to look around. ended up hatching 4 babies out of 15 eggs.. Late today we noticed a "bad egg" smell in the room where we have the bator.. REALLY BAD.. BATOR had not been opened since day before and it REEKED!! mOVED 4 live ones to brooder box.. husband candled rest of eggs.. 4 had no development, the rest were fully developed, dead in shell. Now, in this hatch, we had removed the turner on day 18.. other hatches we left turner in and just unplugged it so all were large end up. Babies hatched fine. Does anyone else remove turner, not just turn it off? Humidity was at 62-65% since day 18.

Any help greatly appreciated..this is only our third hatch.

The other factor.. we had 2 other eggs in the bator that aren't due til Dec 6th..
so, my husband did open bator to turn those eggs... guess this a BIG OOPS!!

pAUL&BARB

 

[Siamesesage]

FORGOT TO add.. we have 4 beautiful white ameraucana large fowl chicks! Maybe we will get lucky and have a rooster!!!

 

[Pumpkinpup]

I always take my eggs out of the turner for hatching. never seems to have been a problem.
Sounds like you had a rotten egg in the bunch. Yaht could have effected your hatch as well.
Staggared hatches are not a good idea as a general rule. I have done them but they are never as successful as non staggared for me.
Hope this helps

 

[hatchaholic]

Not usually a good idea to leave them in the turner to hatch because it could hurt their legs.

I'm no expert by any means, but I use two bators when I do a staggered hatch. As a rule, you should only open the bator if absolutely necessary during the last three days.

And, you could have just had some bad eggs. In my last batch, I had a whole dozen eggs not make it. Either scrambled by the po or just quit. They all had really weird shaped air sacs. I hate having to ship eggs!

Dont' give up. It's a learning process. I've got some hatching myself right now.

 

[Guinea Goonie]

If you are doing a staggard hatch, you really should use two incubators. You really shoule take out the turner at the 18th day and let the eggs find a positoin so the chicks can come to the air pocket in the eggs. Some people use egg cartons with the air pocket of the egg in the upright position, I do not have a feeling on this one way or the other. We use the screen that came with the incubator and make absolute sure that the humidity is good.

I have hatched a few eggs from the barn (under brood bantams) that I just could not let die and a few have hatchede with the turner on. Luckily I did not have a disaster. I did leave the holes around the eggs open (I had candled them and knew they were close, but did not know the exact date).

My hatching days are over for the winter. I have two tiny ones in a brooder upstairs and about 8 in one in the parrots bird room that stays about 80 degrees.

BTY I have completely converted my heat source to Reptile heat coils and I use the 100 watt ones. I do not have to worry about the light bulbs burning out and they put off a really good amount of heat, almost as much as the 250 watt heat lamps that suck your wallet dry at the end of the month.

The other really nice thing about the reptile coils is that there is NO light. So the chicks actually go to sleep for the night instead of running around, eating and drinking and making noise.

They seem so much more content with thier world. It is a nice change.

 

[Siamesesage]

Thanks everybody for your answers.. chalk this hatch up to experience learned and NO MORE staggered hatches.

We use the 250 heat lamp right now, nobody in area had the reptile coils.. all sold out! We are trying something new.. we put huge brooder box in our greenhouse.. we have to keep small heater going in there for the plants.. sooo ..might just as well have chicks in there.. grin.. "free" heat source.. took some convincing of hubby, but much quieter in the house.. even tho we don't get extreme cold here, gets down to 20-30 during dec/jan/feb.. then up to 80s during the day!The chicks we just transfered to the greenhouse are 1 month old.. we decided to keep new chicks in house for first month.. grin.. after 1 mos. old they start to get obnoxious in house!

 

[becky3086]

I wanted to put mine in the greenhouse too but it is plastic and I was afraid the cats would break through it and get to the chicks