Our First Shipped Eggs - Incubation Diary

[brownfoxfarm]

Candled again today (day 7). Out of 16 eggs, here's what I saw:

8 developing with visible movements.

• Of these 1 was slightly rolling air cell that appears to have re-attached, the other has an air cell that is still mobile - this one concerns me.

3 developing, but I was unable to distinguish any independent movements.
5 showed no sign of any growth.

I broke open those with no development and none had any signs of ever being fertile. No blood ring, no veins, they just looked like eggs, but with flatter yolks. One of the eggs was starting to get a little sticky leak on the shell, but, though the yolk appeared larger, there was no other difference.

I will be posting photos of these inspected eggs shortly.

 

[brownfoxfarm]

Here are 2 photos of what the dud eggs looked like when I broke them open:



I took a photo of each of the eggs that didn't start developing, 5 all together, but they looked almost exactly alike. None were fertile.

With the cold winds we've been having the heater is working overtime & the humidity is extremely low in the house. So it's been difficult maintaining a consistent humidity in the incubator. I took a photo at 6:30 this morning (day 8) to show the eggs & thermometers & it shows the humidity dropped again overnight. But candling shows the air cells are expanding at an acceptable rate. I think that I'll be investing in a digital scale before our next hatch, so I can check the rate of weight lost.


I use a soft lead pencil to write on the eggs. I mark the air cell border & the date, and when I see veins or movement. The egg in the piece of carton is the one that started developing, but the air cell is still rolling

 

[brownfoxfarm]

Here's the video - We have movement... Big enough to see!

Watch the right half of the egg.

Out of 11 fertile eggs 6 have distinct movement. Of the remaining 5, one looks like it failed early (a very dark spot, the size of 2 pencil erasers & few veins), another like it failed recently (plenty of veins, but a lot of cloudy bright pink/red), and 3 with no visible movement but no other reason to lose hope.

Onward and upward!

 

[brownfoxfarm]

A surprise Valentine's Day gift - meet Val the brand new chick

The only thing this little one has to do with our shipped eggs is that they shared the incubator with her(him) overnight. We have 2 broody hens and this chick hatched last night, but got scooted out from under the momma and was freezing cold & barely breathing when I found her on my last check before lights-out. This morning she is raring to go!

Otherwise all is well in the 'bator and I'll be candling again soon.

 

[Caitlin_VT]

A surprise Valentine's Day gift - meet Val the brand new chick

The only thing this little one has to do with our shipped eggs is that they shared the incubator with her(him) overnight. We have 2 broody hens and this chick hatched last night, but got scooted out from under the momma and was freezing cold & barely breathing when I found her on my last check before lights-out. This morning she is raring to go!

Otherwise all is well in the 'bator and I'll be candling again soon.

Aw, so cute!

 

[ChucktheChick]

So cute! Love the name

 

[brownfoxfarm]

***Be warned - graphic photos of embryos who died during incubation.***

******These embryos died around day 7 of the incubation process.******

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The first 2 photos are of an embryo which showed growth until day 7, but on day 9 there was no movement.




These second two photos are of the embryo which showed growth and some movement, but did not continue growing past day 9.



As of today, there are 11 eggs in the incubator. 8 eggs are moving and growing and doing great, one egg is the "rolling air cell" egg and it is also growing and moving, but I have very low expectations for it...

Two are additions from under our broody hens. After Val hatched 2 nights ago, I candled their eggs, knowing that out of the 2 dozen they were setting some were surely dead & some would have been snuck in by hens who didn't feel like setting their own & would be at earlier stages of development. I moved these to the incubator after seeing they were alive and moving, but closer in their development to those we have in the incubator. Once the hens finished their 3 day final watch they would get up and leave these eggs to die in the cold. They are barnyard crosses (a Silkie/x and a green speckled Ameraucana/X egg) & we shall see how they do.

 

[brownfoxfarm]

Things are growing the way they should in the incubator (cross my fingers and knock on wood). It's still difficult to keep the humidity consistent, I add a wee bit of water 3x per day when the hygrometer says it's 35% or less. For example, this morning I checked at 5:15 and it was 30%. I added water to the paper towel under the mesh and it's risen to 47% at 6:15. But when I check in another 45 minutes it's gonna be up around 60%. Then in an hour or so it will start dropping again. I am marking the air cell growth and it seems in line with what I've seen in various diagrams, so I'm hoping we'll be alright and not too far on either side of the line.

In other news, Saturday night the broody hen team hatched another chick out in the shed. Where Val was a rusty black, this chick is more silver & black striped. Very cute and doing well.

 

[brownfoxfarm]

Well that was fun!

Yesterday (day 14) started out beautiful, if a bit windy, and ended with SLOP. The rain started coming down and the temperature dropped more than 20 degrees. The rain turned to heavy wet snow and the wind screamed. At about 7 pm the power started flickering, off for a minute or two back on for a second, off for 30 seconds, back on for 5 minutes, off again... etc... I was torn - should I just unplug the incubator? Would the thermostat somehow be damaged? I was quite afraid we'd have a surge and the babies would be cooked in there. But I also feared I would jump the gun and we'd end up with a longer outage (12+ hours is not unusual out here) and the temps would drop so much that the babies would be damaged or killed.

I decided to leave it plugged in. Maybe that could have turned out to be a bad choice, but since we were having flickers due to wind and we weren't in the middle of a lightning storm, I felt a little better about it. Still, we had to turn off the house furnace, because we didn't want it to be in the middle of a heating cycle with the fan running and have the on again off again power jerking it around. (All we need is a furnace replacement bill that we can't possibly afford.) So, in the course of the 2 and a half hours that the most flickering occurred, the temp in the house dropped to about 58 degrees. But the incubator managed to stay around 99-100 degrees.

I think we'll be okay.

 

[Caitlin_VT]

Good luck! We keep our house fairly cold.. It is only about 62-66 in the room (bedroom) that I have my incubator in. First time, we'll see how it goes!