Open eggs if i think quails are dead inside?

[sabrinaTmartens]

Hi everyone,

Due to some unfortunate events these past week, i now have 7 quail eggs under a heat lamp. The mother didn't sit on the eggs for a very long time, one hatched and got picked to dead by one of the other quails and 2 other died while trying to hatch( mom kept kicking them out of the nest)

The last one that died trying to hatch was almost 3 days ago. All 7 eggs have a air sack and dark area( the baby).

Yesterdag and today i did the 'water test' where i put the eggs in warm water and see if they wobble. Only one did definitely wobble both times but i didn't hear any pipping.

I know you should never open a egg, but i kind of think i should open one of the eggs that didn't wobble to see what is going on in there.

Does anybody have a tip for me?

Thank you!

 

[dc3085]

Most of us open eggs that didn't hatch to see why they didn't, so you probably won't hurt anything. If the float test didn't show results it's probably dead in the shell anyway.

 

[sabrinaTmartens]

Last night i carefully openened the 7 eggs that didn't wobble during the water candling test.
3 didn't have baby quails's inside, and the other 3 did but they were already dead.

It was quite weird because they were all in a very different stage of development, and the oldest probably not older then 13/14 days.

I now still have 1 egg under a heat lamp that did wobble, i don't have much hope it will even come out, but i feel like i still should wait.

The thing is i could be almost ready to hatch, but also still under developed, so i really don't have a clue about this last egg.

 

[dc3085]

Hatching is the first opportunity these birds have to win a Darwin award. If they don't make it out of the shell on their own they most often aren't strong enough to survive.