Piped egg when to help

[Mogul Moonshine]

All right so I have an egg that pipped maybe five hours ago and it hasn’t been making any progress what do I do I have 24 hours left until the hatch date

 

[coach723]

Don't do anything yet. They often pip on day 20 and it can take 24 hours for them to zip.
More info:
https://chickenandchicksinfo.com/chick-pipped-but-not-hatching/

 

[Mogul Moonshine]

Thanks I am new at this and it’s nerve-racking

 

[coach723]

Piping is when they first break through, start moving around and chirping. Zipping is when they start rotating in the egg, breaking around so they can get out. And yes, it can be nerve wracking, seems like it takes forever! It's best whenever possible, to let nature do it's job. Only as a very last resort should help be given. Many feel that you should not help at all, that if they are not strong enough to get out on their own, they are too weak to do well. That is incredibly hard for most humans to do. And helping can sometimes cause damage that isn't survivable, so it has to be done very carefully. I've got eggs in an incubator right now, 4 of them pipped this morning, I can hear them intermittently but no zip yet. Good luck with your hatch!

 

[Mellowmalt]

I can confirm the nerve wrecking part but I can also confirm that not helping is the best thing to do. I've got an ailing chick and it's heartbreaking, even if they manage to hatch by themselves they can still struggle as I have learnt by now so a chick that can't even make it out the shell by itself will be too weak to survive anyway. There are some exceptions, most notably if the incubator is run too dry or it is opened excessively during pipping - both human errors and then intervening can rectify these errors but generally I have adopted the stance to not help, as long as I know I didn't mess up the incubation, if it dies in the shell, better than dying in my arms

Another way to look at it is that if a chick is too weak to hatch by itself and you are able to save it and it miraculously manages to survive by itself - it might still be a weak chicken that you'd ideally not want to use for future breeding. It is a hard decision but ultimately you want strong chickens so avoid even thinking about helping unless you really feel like you need to after leaving it for a full day and it's not making any progress after that and you really want to not let it die.

 

[coach723]

Update on mine. Had one zip and hatch at 10PM last night. 3 more hatched overnight. Currently have one zipped and very close to hatch and a few others pipped. Being patient is really hard! It's so exciting to see the babies, but patience is key. Hope yours are going well.