Patiently (maybe not completely) waiting for my babies to hatch

[1muttsfan]

23 out now with 19 still in, pips seen in several. Had a bad humidity episode last night and ended up in the hot, steamy bathroom with the shower running at 1 am this morning. Added some sponges and humidity has stabilized. Had 2 that were dried out and needed moisturizing, but the rest seem to be coming out ok without any assistance. See you DO have to watch that thing all the time!!

Getting sleepy now thought -

 

[lotsablessings]

Quote:
Does you bator read out the humidity? If not, how can you determine the humidity is where it needs to be?

 

[1muttsfan]

I have two humidity gauges, both read exactly the same when I calibrated them before setup, both completely different now and at no time have either of them been over 72% - !?! The sponges i had in the bator seemed to be drying out very quickly, though.

What I saw were several pipped eggs that did not progress at all after 6 hours. When I (carefully) pulled away a little shell, I could see the membranes were tightly adhered to the chicks. This prevents them from rotating and unzipping. So I applied a little warm water (avoiding the beak - don't want to drown the little darlings), gently peeled the membrane away a little, then left them to push out on their own. I also added more sponges, and flooded the bottom of the incubator. So far things are going better, 3 more hatched out this afternoon and several more pipped.

 

[lotsablessings]

Quote:
hmmm...I am wondering if something like this was my problem, outside of the lower temps.

My numbers were WAY low for what I was expecting.

31 eggs put in. 6 were weeded out due to no growth, blood rings, etc around day 8. That left me with 25 eggs. There were only 4 I couldn't quite confirm due to dark shells. The other 21 I was very sure of. I could see movement and all were growing at the same rate. At day 16, I couldn't tell what was going on inside the eggs anymore, so I stopped candling at the point. Day 23 I started seeing a few pips with one actually hatching. That one chick was my only hatch that day. Through out day 24, we had 9 more hatches, and one partial. The partial one didn't make it. DH pulled a bit of the membrane lose because we saw it was drying on the chick, but just wasn't enough. That was a total of 11 chicks, with one not making it, leaving 14 eggs that were left. I gave them until Saturday evening (Day 25). Out of curiousity, I opened them up. 5 were fully mature chicks that I assume were too weak to break through? I only noticed a deformity in one...it's tummy was prodruding out. There were 7 that died just a couple of days premature. They had all their down and "parts", but were just half the size they should have been. The other two were duds.

We were camping during days 17-19. I checked on the eggs right before we left late day 17. Temp was fine and water level were fine. When we got back on day 19, I added water to additional slots in the tray, removed chicks from the turner and left the bator closed until I removed the first 10 chicks. On day 25, I removed the deceased chick and unhatched eggs.

10 live chicks out of 31 eggs. That number seems really low. That's just barely a 1/3 of the eggs...

What could have caused this? This is my very first incubation try. I followed everything to the letter. Found out here that my temp was incorrect, though. I wan't to do a second batch with the eggs I have collected from my hens, but I don't want to loose that many next time. If I am doing something wrong, or if the incubator is malfunctioned, I want to correct it. I checked the bator thermometer with a medical thermometer we have and it was fine. Is there something different I should do with the humidity at the end? The instructions said to fill only two reservoirs with water at day 18-19. SHould I fill one more? It seems there really wasn't any problem until right at the end...

ETA: OH! And can you share more with me about the sponge thing you're doing?

 

[1muttsfan]

First off, keep in mind that you can do everything completely right and still have a bad hatch. There are just so many variables, including the fertility of the parents, the hardiness of the chicks, and developmental defects that can arise. So many very experienced hatchers report bad hatches with no obvious explanation. So don't feel to bad, you certainly didn't do to badly if this was your first hatch. It can take a few hatches to shake down a new incubator. Make sure that your temp is where it should be, and try again.

Use eggs that are not too valuable until you get things figured out, nothing like loosing a batch ox expensive shipped eggs to really ruin your day

the incubator I have now,a small tabletop one, needs a small sponge placed in the outer water ring to keep the humidity up this time of the year when the furnace is still running a lot and the air is dry. This helps increase the surface area that the water evaporates off of. You can do this if your humidity seems consistantly low.

Must be all that worrying I did helped too, I ended up with 60% hatched out on my shipped eggs, which is darn good!