Power Outage and hatching

[BHall8705]

On Thursday April 9th my farm was hit by a tornado here in Northern, IL so I lost power to everything in the house and barns. It was about 12-18 hours before I was able to hook my incubator in to a generator, and before I did that the humidity was at 85% and 70 degrees. The eggs were 19 days along, so I ended up just taking them off the turner and locking them down when I finally got the generator set up on that Friday. On Sunday we heard one chirping through the shell and it piped through and started to hatch, but died before he hatched and I still see nothing from the other eggs at day 22 now.

We have more eggs to add to the incubator, but do not want to risk taking out eggs who may hatch, but did all the changes in temperature and movement of the incubator ruin our first hatching? Has anyone had experience with this before?

 

[AmyLynn2374]

On Thursday April 9th my farm was hit by a tornado here in Northern, IL so I lost power to everything in the house and barns. It was about 12-18 hours before I was able to hook my incubator in to a generator, and before I did that the humidity was at 85% and 70 degrees. The eggs were 19 days along, so I ended up just taking them off the turner and locking them down when I finally got the generator set up on that Friday. On Sunday we heard one chirping through the shell and it piped through and started to hatch, but died before he hatched and I still see nothing from the other eggs at day 22 now.

We have more eggs to add to the incubator, but do not want to risk taking out eggs who may hatch, but did all the changes in temperature and movement of the incubator ruin our first hatching? Has anyone had experience with this before?

Sorry to hear that! Possible. Have you candled or tried the float test? I would do that first and see if there are any signs of life. Then you can base your next step on those findings.

 

[BHall8705]

We have tried candling, but would we be seeing them move? We candled them at 18 days, but that was before the outage. Unsure how to tell if they kept developing afterwards. The only reason we knew the one was o.k. was the little chirping inside! (which was an amazing thing to hear for the first time!) I have never heard of the float test though.

 

[AmyLynn2374]

We have tried candling, but would we be seeing them move? We candled them at 18 days, but that was before the outage. Unsure how to tell if they kept developing afterwards. The only reason we knew the one was o.k. was the little chirping inside! (which was an amazing thing to hear for the first time!) I have never heard of the float test though.

If you candle now, chances are if you have any good possibilities of hatchers, you'll see internal pips into the air cell with movement. It's a pointed (the beak's) shadow into the air cell. If you don't see anything I'd get a bowl of warm (abt 100F water) and place the egg in it if it floats AND wiggles then you know there's still life moveing in there. Yes, it is amazing hearing that first internal pip chirp. Every step is amazing, even after the firsts.

 

[WalnutHill]

The float test is easy. Take a large cup (like a 2 or 4 cup measuring cup) and fill with water that is about 105F. It will lose heat to the bowl.

Place an egg in the bowl, fat end up, and watch for this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6Hsv6OB2gtYjRRTXNzd0lyQlU/view?usp=sharing


If you see this, the chick is alive. But be sure not to do this with any egg with a pip!