ok huge question, sorry about it.

[stellas mommy]

ok so I was candling eggs ( i only do it once or 2ce during the incubation process) And there was one that looked dead. My friend said he wanted to see how far along it was so I told him ok. We cracked it open and there was a tiny baby chicken in there that was alive I wont go into detail but it was alive.

Now my question is, that happened about 2 days ago and today is hatch day. Why was it so small? Would it have died anyways since it wasnt big enough to hatch? I'm just curious about what happend. I set the eggs on the 3rd of this month and no eggs have hatched early like they did before and I'm worried i did something wrong. There are some that look small and some that look huge in the eggs when I candled them.

 

[Cattitude]

Did you have a power outage during incubation time? That can delay your hatch. Maybe some other folks can weigh in with possible causes.

 

[bobbieschicks]

Sorry you went through that. I know that our 1st clutch hatched around day 22 and the last clutch hatched early on day 19. So, I'm thinking 21 days is an average and maybe yours was going to be a longer then average hatch. According to my hovabator flyer, if the temps are too low it will take longer for them to develop. There's a chart at enchanted learning that we use to see where the chick should be on whatever date when we candle. If it helps for next time, I also saw somewhere that if there are veins showing when you candle, then the chick is alive and you can sometimes see them pulsing. Hope someone else can give you a better answer.

 

[shanshan51]

I too noticed that in mine. Some really fill the shell and others do not. Really curious!