Peep but no pip?

[laverne]

I put in eggs on Nov 1st and they were due Monday, but I only had one chick pip (on day 20) and it never zipped and died in the egg.

Today is day 23 and I still don't have any other external pips, but last night one chick was peeping. No peeping at all this morning, though.

I'm keeping humidity in the mid 70's, but for whatever reason my incubator went out of whack right after lockdown and is reading a 10 degree difference from one side to the other. I thought maybe all the chicks had gotten too hot and died, but on the cooler side 4 are still moving (I candled since it's day 23 and I thought they were all probably just dead) and the temperature is fluctuating between 95-100. Will the chicks on the cool side just hatch really late?

My other question is this: I've been hearing peeping the last couple days but it goes on for a few hours then stops, and there isn't an external pip following it. Are my chicks pipping internally then suffocating before they pip externally? If so, what causes this? And how likely is it that they're internally pipping then just hanging out in the egg for 24+ hours silently?

 

[cmom]

There are a lot of factors that can affect a hatch. Do you have a fan? What has the temp and humidity been for the first 18 days and also from day 18 to day 21+? Have you had the humidity in the mid 70's during the entire incubation? If so then the chicks could be drowning when they pip internally. The eggs need to loose a certain amount of moisture during incubation and if they can't then condensation builds up in the eggs causing the chicks to drown. I keep my humidity around 35% during incubation and on day 18 when I go into lockdown then increase it to around 75%. This works best for me. If you are running an incubator with a fan then your temp is good. If your incubator is a still air the temp should be around 101 at the top of the eggs.

 

[Tripp16]

Ok the same thing happened to me! I lost a whole dozen eggs to this makes me sick. If you really can't find any pips open the Bator and flip the eggs over see of they pipped on the bottom side. Mine did this during the night and I finally decided to open the Bator and by that time they had all suffocated!

 

[laverne]

Quote:
I did basically what you do - my bator is homemade and it has a CPU fan cycling air through. I live in Oregon and at sea level so I kept humidity around 35 during the first 18 days (I figure it's pretty humid here) and my 4 thermometers were all reading between 99-100.5 then. Now they're at 95-101 on one side and 99-103 on the other. The eggs on the hot side didn't have movement when I candled so I don't want to mess with temp and damage the eggs on the cool side so I'm letting it run a bit low temp-wise on the side with viable eggs.

Quote:
One was peeping when I candled and had internally pipped but it hadn't pipped externally. Then it stopped peeping and I haven't heard it today so I think they're dying before they pip externally, I just don't know why!

 

[oesdog]

Sorry to hear your trouble. I lost a good load of chicks too. I guess your issue is shrink wrap! Due to humidity and temp. I did get two live chicks but these were helped to hatch when they finally piped on day 27 and 28. It is very rare for chicks to survive at this late stage and both of my boys had issues as they grew.
- keep trying and maybe next time things will be better. Just don;t give up!!!!!!

Oesdog

 

[waw]

i'm not real sure

 

[laverne]

Well, I won an auction for more eggs so I'm going to try again.

If by some miracle these hatch there's always room for more chicks!

I've left the eggs in the incubator undisturbed but still no sign of hatching and no peeping today, either. I'll candle again tomorrow to see if I see movement but I'm not holding out much more hope...

I grabbed a non-digital thermometer and hygrometer for reptile cages to see if those give better readings for next time. The hygrometer is reading that our house humidity is 50-55% right now so I don't understand how they got shrink wrapped if that's what happened. I was more worried that I was keeping the humidity too low during the first 18 days but I opted for dry incubation because we have such high humidity in the winters that I thought drying out the eggs would be less likely than drowning them. Maybe I'll run them at 45% next time? I tried to weigh them as they progressed and they lost about the right amount of weight so maybe I won't mess with it.

When I open up the eggs in a day or two to look at the chicks is there anything in particular to look for? A dry white membrane for shrink wrap/low humidity or fluid in the egg for drowning/too high humidity?