Hello again, Penguin!
They should have hatched by now, but I'd leave them in another day or so, just to be sure. When you do take them out, break them open (this may not be pleasant) to see if the chicks began to develop at all.
A couple more questions for you:
1. Did you put the eggs in the rack with the pointy side down? The air cell in the egg is in the other end (the wider end) and it should be up. It seems upside down, and most people would probably put them in pointy side up if they didn't specifically know to do it the other way.
2. I don't use a separate hatcher (I just hatch the eggs in the bottom of the incubator). But a hatcher is fine. My question is, was the hatcher heated? It should be at the same temperature as the incubator.
3. What was the humidity in the hatcher? I always increase the humidity quite a bit during that hatching period (the last few days, which is also called "lockdown").
4. You said early in your first post that you had four adult Texas A&M quail (and more that were hatched on January 7). Later in your post you said you had four females and one male. Could you clarify? Is the male one of the adults and, if so, do you know how old he is?
5. Do you know how old the hens are? If they're either very young adults (and these were their first eggs) or older adults (close to two years old or older), that could affect fertility. if they were young, the more recent eggs should be better. If they're old, you'll probably need to wait on your January 7 chicks to start laying (just a few more weeks, probably).
Here are a couple of other things that occur to me that may explain your chicks not hatching:
A. I think you said you collected the eggs two days after you brought the quail home. It could be that even though the male is doing his job now that he hadn't at that time. And the eggs just weren't fertile.
B. 53% humidity is higher that I use (although I know I tend to be on the low end -- 35 to 40%). I think 53% is within the range that a lot of people recommend. But if we don't come up with another explanation, it could be that the eggs didn't lose enough moisture during those first 14 days and the chicks drowned when they finally pipped. Lower humidity would address that.
C. I keep my temperature right at 99.5 degree the whole time. I don't think you being one degree lower than that explains the lack of hatching, but I would raise it a degree next time. Also, you might put a small digital thermometer in the incubator and run it a bit, just to make sure that the incubator's thermostat is working right.
D. I'm not sure where you're located. Is it possible the eggs were exposed to extreme temperature, hot or cold, before you collected them?
F. This time of year, we always seem to lose power during a storm at some point where I live. If that happened to you for more than an hour or so, it would be a problem. Or if anyone was opening the incubator a little too often and inadvertently cooling it off, that wouldn't be good.
G. Just really bad luck. If I read your post correctly, you incubated five eggs. You would think that you should get at least two or three to hatch, but you're (almost) always going to have some that don't hatch, and with just five eggs, it's possible you didn't do anything wrong and just got really unlucky.
Several of these are kind of grasping at straws, I know, but it's got to be something.
