Our Very First Hatch... Good and Bad. Pix-GRAPHIC

[KDH]

Well, we had three fertile, live eggs (black Jersey giants). All rockin' and rollin' on day 22. Two hatched - vigorous, healthy chicks. The third was still rockin' the evening of day 22, so we didn't bug it. Yesterday morning (day 23), I took the two hatched chicks out of the incubator and into thier brooder, and took a closer look/listen to the last egg. Didn't detect any movement. Did the float test. Still no movement. So performed an egg-autopsy, and discovered why. Sad, but very educational. I don't think there was anything we could have done to save these little guys.

So, it was a bittersweet inaugural hatch for us.

The lucky two:

The unlucky two:

 

[Wyogirl]

Happy for the two and sad for the other,
Ayda
Very cute little chicks btw

 

[Jloeffler]

Wow, two in one egg!? I'm surprised they developed that far with such limited space!

 

[KDH]

We were amazed. It never even occurred to us there might be twins. And that at least one of them was still alive and kicking enough to rock their egg on day 22...

The other two are doing great, so that's nice... I hope they're hens.

 

[Anarchy82]

Its weird, a couple days ago I was wondering if an egg could carry two chickens (twins)
I guess I know now they can, just doesn't mean they will make it.

Sorry for your loss, but the two healthy ones look awsome.

 

[KDH]

The healthy ones are doing great. Eating, drinking, pooping. Running all over their brooder. I still feel bad for the twins, especially as at least one of them was alive when the others hatched, because the egg was moving around. Don't know if we could have helped by "pipping" for them... 'course, we didn't know the egg had two chicks in it - this was our first experience incubating and hatching, so I think we're probably lucky to get the two healthy chicks that we did get. I imagine if twin chicks DO hatch live, they probably tend to have problems (I'm used to breeding horses - we don't EVER want to see twins with horses... rarely ends well for either foal)...

Oh, well... sigh.

 

[Sphinx]

Oh, poor twins.

There was a lady here who had twins in an egg. She knew there was two in there pretty early on. She ended up helping them both hatch, and from what I heard, both did well. It seems like in yours, however, only one would've been developed enough to survive.

Here's the video if you care to watch:

 

[Cattitude]

Wow! I'm glad for the two lovelies that made it, and sad that the other two weren't able to live. They were very very close, both of them, to being able to survive out of the egg. I've seen chicks survive that were hatched with that much guts still hanging out. I just left them in the incubator until they finished developing, loosely wrapped in a slightly damp paper towel. It's such a rare thing to have two in one egg develop like this; there is no way you could have anticipated it.