Oh no! My power went out on day 11!

[gumpsgirl]

My power went out for about an hour to a hour and a half and I freaked! The first thing I thought of was my eggs! My DH thinks I nuts anyways, but this really did it.

I scrambled for the phone and called the power company. I told them they needed to hurry and get the problem fixed because I had eggs in an incubator that would go bad if they didn't hurry. My DH chimes in, "Oh, just tell them we have a life support system and we can't be without power!" I asked him what he meant by that when I got off of the phone and he told me the incubator was the life support system!

My temp. only dropped to 94 but the humidity shot way up to 68%. Is this going to hurt anything? It wasn't that way for long. As soon as the power came back on I took the towel off of the top of the bator that I had placed there to help keep the heat in and opened the lid a bit to let some of the humidity out. Please tell me that I don't have $50 worth of eggs that are going to go bad.

I will cry.

 

[speckledhen]

They should be fine! That wasn't very long. Probably no harm done.

 

[Hangin Wit My Peeps]

Nope they will be fine...mine went out for 5 hours and my temps were down to 75 and humidity was WAY up too and they hatches

I wouldn't worry to much

 

[Katy]

Mine went out on the eggs that are hatching now a couple of weeks ago for about 3 or 4 hours I think it was....they're hatching just fine.

 

[gumpsgirl]

Thank you Cyn, Katy, and Hangin Wit My Peeps. I feel much better now! I tell you though, it did make me panic! With the way I was panicking, you would've thought that one of my kids needed to go to the ER!

That's shameful, isn't it?!?! Who knows what that poor lady at the power dept. thought when I called in!

 

[donnap1967]

I am sure everything will be fine. Mine has gone out 4 times during this past 20 days because of the heat wave we had, and they are doing just fine.

Good luck!

 

[MissPrissy]

Get a UPS battery backup for a pc and plug your incubators in to it.

 

[gumpsgirl]

Quote:
Great idea MissP! I will have to find me one so this doesn't happen again. I can't take the stress of it!

 

[Farmer Kitty]

Info on power outages during Incubation.
From- A Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow

The more valuable your hatching eggs are, the more likely it is that the electricity will go out during incubation. If you have an uninterruptable power source (UPS) for your computer or other electronic equipment, consider disconnecting the usual equipment and using the UPS to power your incubator. If the outage comtinues beyond its capacity to keep your incubator running, or you don't have an UPS, open the incubator and let the eggs cool until the power goes back on.

Trying to keep the eggs warm is likely to cause abnormal embryo development. Furthermore, if you close the vents or wrap the incubator with blankets in your attempt to keep eggs warm, a greater danger than temperature loss is oxygen deprivation. Developing embryos use up oxygen rather rapidly, and the oxygen level may soon fall below that necessary to keep them alive.

As soon as the power goes back on, close the incubator and continue operating it as usual. The effect of the outage on your hatch will depend on how long the power was out and on how long the eggs had been incubated before the outage. A power failure of up to 12 hours may not significally affect the hatch (except to delay it somewhat), especially if the outage occurred during the early incubation, when cooled embryos naturally tend to go dormant. Embryos that are close to term generate enough heat to carry them through a short-term outage.

 

[Tuffoldhen]

I had a power outage here two weeks ago for 5 or 6 hours...they hatched out just fine...all but one made it and I think it was gone on day 18...so you are okay, trust me....