New to BYC and incubating and need help ...

[willows68]

I use that rubber drawer liner stuff in my brooders for the day-olds. It stops them slipping and is very easy to clean. I am sure this would work well inside the incubator too. I'm just too nervous to disturb the eggs when they are approaching lockdown.

 

[TwoCrows]

My concern is that the newly hatched chicks (for their first day in the incubator) would have trouble with footing on the tray. Maybe a cheesecloth or a couple paper towels under the eggs and over the indents in the tray?

Yes, at lock down, I remove any turners, if you can, and always lay down that rubber shelf liner so the chicks have a sticky surface to hatch on. Slippery surfaces will cause splay or spraddle legs. But anything will work to get them off any plastic surfaces. Good luck with your hatch!

 

[KristineY]

Shelf liner!! That's what I'll do! Thank you so much!

 

[willows68]

Hello TwoCrows, well my hatch has now finished. Final count is 11 out of 20 eggs. I need some further advice - what went wrong? I did open a couple of the unhatched eggs and they had fully formed chicks inside and also very small chicks inside with a huge air space at the top. One egg I opened the chick was completely black. Please tell me what I did wrong and how I can improve before my next hatch.

 

[TwoCrows]

Hello TwoCrows, well my hatch has now finished. Final count is 11 out of 20 eggs. I need some further advice - what went wrong? I did open a couple of the unhatched eggs and they had fully formed chicks inside and also very small chicks inside with a huge air space at the top. One egg I opened the chick was completely black. Please tell me what I did wrong and how I can improve before my next hatch.

These were shipped eggs right? This is common with shipped eggs. A 50% hatch is considered pretty good actually. But it is hard to say for sure. Deaths early on can be from eggs getting jostled during shipping, drops or spikes in temps in the bator. Deaths mid way can be from poor breeding stock, improper temps during incubation, or even poor ventilation. But because you had 11 out of 20 survive to hatch, I am going to say that the rest didn't make it because of them being shipped eggs. 50% is not bad for shipped eggs. So I think you did fantastic! All my shipped egg hatches gave me 50% to 70%. I have never had better with shipped eggs.

I think you did a fine job!

How are the babies doing so far? I hope they are all doing well.

 

[willows68]

The eggs in this hatch were from my own flock. My rooster and his selected ladies are all being fed a breeders crumb, and greens of course. The rooster and hens are all about the same age. I bought them last August as POL. The rooster was sourced from a different breeder so they are unrelated.

 

[TwoCrows]

Then you may have and some issue with your incubation process that caused early deaths. Do you have good venting in your bator? Oxygen is very important to the growth of the embryo's and they need more and more as they grow. If they were starved of it during the cycle and some of these eggs were in a spot in the bator that was not getting enough, they could of died from being oxygen starved.

Is this still air or forced air? Still air can have hot spots which can kill the chicks inside the eggs. Forced air tends to keep the temp more stable because of the movement of air where as still air can collect spots of heat in the bator keeping the temp far too high.

 

[willows68]

I think maybe a forced air. It is a R-com 20 Pro. Link below.

http://www.pandtpoultry.co.uk/product/categoryid/84/productid/1266

As for ventilation, it has vents on the front. It's quite cold here at the moment so I don't have the window open in the study where the incubator is set up, but the door is always open leading into the hall.

 

[TwoCrows]

Ok...I have an R-com as well. They are pretty reliable incubators. But definitely, if you are keeping the bator near a door, this is a no no. Keep it in a place with stable air and humidity. When the air temp around the bator changes, so does the temp inside the bator. It could have sensed cool air and cranked up the heat too high, or possibly did not sense it at all and you had cool spots in the bator.

So next time keep it in a more stable area and I think you will definitely get a better hatch rate.

 

[willows68]

Where do you keep you incubator? I live in an old farmhouse with extremely thick walls so most of the rooms are pretty cool. I could keep the incubators in my sewing room? However, that room does not get a lot of sun during summer or winter and remains fairly cool all year round. Your advice would be most appreciated.