Only Two of Seven hatched

[4boysn6chicks]

Hi,

We set 10 eggs in an incubtor and after eight days candled them, throwing out three that looked infertile. Two of the seven hatched on day 20 and are doing great. The other five never hatched and when we opened them up all had some version of a partially developed chick. Why did two do ok and not the other five? Feel like we did something wrong and yet we were so diligent about watching the temperature and humidity. Please help.

First Timers

 

[showchickens12]

I have only hatched chicks once but I know you should never open the incubator. I don't mean to be rude but you should NEVER EVER do that

 

[4boysn6chicks]

I understood that you NEED to candle eggs in order to get rid of infertile ones. I know that you shouldn't open the incubator three days prior to the hatching but we opened it way before then. How do you candle? Are their another way?

 

[4boysn6chicks]

Sorry, is there (darn auto-correct!)

 

[red horse ranch]

I understood that you NEED to candle eggs in order to get rid of infertile ones. I know that you shouldn't open the incubator three days prior to the hatching but we opened it way before then. How do you candle? Are their another way?

You did right to candle for infertile eggs. I usually candle around day 12 and then again before going into lockdown on day 18. And you do have to open the incubator to do it.

I don't know why some eggs don't make it all the way to become chicks. I just pulled the plug on my incubator and candled the remaining eggs. 14 chicken and 5 guinea eggs went into lockdown. I got 7 chicks and one guinea. It's so discouraging. A lot of mine were shrink wrapped and failed to pip. My humidity was perfect the whole time.
My brood hens and roos get vitamins and extra protein during breeding season. All the eggs were freshly collected. So who knows why chicks fail to hatch. I've hatched hundreds of babies over the years. Maybe more. But I still haven't figured it out.

 

[4boysn6chicks]

Thank you for your reply. I know there am things we may never understand, but I will certainly try again!

 

[dheltzel]

There is no "perfect humidity", humidity controls the evaporation rate from the eggs and that is one of the most critical things in incubation (along with proper temp, of course). There are some great references on hatching in this site, especially the one by SallySunshine, she has distilled a lot of research into one place.

I get some bad hatches too and am still learning and "tweaking". Last week, only about 50% of some breeds hatched after developing perfectly (others did 100%). This week I got 100% on those breeds, that didn't do well last week, so I think it's not the parents fault but changes I did regarding lockdown humidity (went higher) and air circulation (stopped that once pipping started).

Like I said, I'm still learning and expect to kill more chicks in the future, but that's part of what make this exciting. I would recommend reading and learning and the next batch, watch the air cell development and/or weight to see if the humidity needs adjusting. I've found I need to keep the humidity as low as possible until lockdown, then make it as high as possible. Doesn't follow logic when you consider what a broody hen does, but then they rarely get 100% hatches either.

This is the hatching reference I have found most useful: https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/hatching-eggs-101

 

[OldChurchEggery1]

I've recently experienced some scatter-shot hatches myself. These were using eggs from my own flock, so it couldn't be handling conditions through the Post Office that made such a wild difference in results. I've wondered- is it stress? nutrition? weather fluctuations? We've had some unseasonably cold weather this spring including a very late freeze here in Virginia and I wondered if that would impact the nutrient content of the eggs such that the developing chicks would have been deprived in some way of a vital bit of this or that. My most recent hatch (just cleaned out the incubator yesterday) was terrible! I set a total of 23 eggs and wound up with only nine chicks out of 18 that made it to "lock down." None of them hatched the day they were supposed to; the earliest hatched on day 22 and the rest throughout that day and into day 23. There were still some weak peeps coming from the eggs when I pitched them yesterday (which my 3 year old heard and cried out "Don't throw away our peeps!") but nothing had pipped externally. If something cannot hatch by itself there's probably something wrong with it and I don't want problems perpetuated in my breeding flock.

As others have said, the important thing is to try again. Keeping good notes helps, too, because you can refer back and see which conditions led to better results.