Pipping At Pointy End

[EmilyRobb]

I've never had any issues with hatching my own eggs and all of the chicks end up being happy and healthy in a brooder before sale or moving outdoors, but I keep having this issue where some chicks externally pip away from the air sac. In this week's hatch, 4 of 10 eggs hatched like this (I included the pictures of 2 eggs exhibiting this). In the week prior, 7 of 12 hatched like this. It doesn't seem to matter because they break free and behave/function normally, but am I doing something to cause this? I rotate my eggs 5 times a day until day 18, maintain humidity and temperature, and position the air sac end of the egg slightly upwards. Like I said, it doesn't seem to be an issue but like is this due to external factors or the environment, or is this hereditary, or maybe something else all together?

 

[casportpony]

What are your temp and humidity settings?

 

[333113]

When you candle the eggs, has the air cell increased in size?

I ask because I had almost an entire batch of eggs pip "sideways." When I candled them, they were all too big to turn around in the shell, and I had to help all of them hatch. We had a power outage during the incubation, and I didn't double-check the humidity levels after that. When I checked after the hatching started, I found that the humidity sensor reading was far lower than the actual humidity. So, I was keeping them too humid to lose enough moisture to hatch on their own. Darn electronics. Supposed to make our lives easier!

I bought one of those cheap stand-alone battery-operated electronic (I know!) temperature and humidity sensors, and I put it in one of the egg slots closest to the incubator window, as a cross-check.

Your incubator instructions may have a chart showing how much moisture an egg has to lose to hatch safely. If not, this one is a good reference for ducks:
https://www.metzerfarms.com/Candling.cfm

And this one for chickens, from right here at backyard chickens.com:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...-eggs-just-21-days-from-egg-to-chicken.47696/

Good luck with your hatches!

 

[EmilyRobb]

@casportpony my humidity before lockdown is ~50% and then during lockdown it's 65%-70%. My temperature is usually consistent on the warmer side around 101.5 F

 

[EmilyRobb]

@ConnieA I always candle my eggs at day 7, 14 and 17 and each time I candle I will trace an outline of the air sac so that I can always have references when I'm determining if progress is being made. Any of the "backwards" eggs have always looked like a "normal" egg in candling and the air sac grows essentially the exact same. It may be the fact that the chicks were so large for tiny eggs or something along those lines (they're bantams as well). I haven't had to help a chick at all yet with hatches like that and hopefully it can stay that way more or less hahah

 

[Uff Da]

@casportpony my humidity before lockdown is ~50% and then during lockdown it's 65%-70%. My temperature is usually consistent on the warmer side around 101.5 F

This sounds like a combo of too high humidity and too high temp. The humidity isn't letting them lose enough weight and the temp is causing them to develop faster and grow too large to move around to position themselves. I would lower humidity to 30-40% and not let temp go over 100.5.