Apparently sometime today the lightbulb in my homemade incubator went out today. When I got home the temp was down to 90-89 degrees. The eggs are on day 10. Will this kill them? Affect their growth if not? Advice is welcome from all you wonderful veteran incubators out there!! Thank you!
It all depends on how long the temps were that low. Easiest thing to do is getting going again and candle them in 4 or 5 days to see if the chicks are dead or developing.
Probably hadn't been out too long as we had a cooler day today but the temp hadn't fallen below 89 yet. I had the temp back up in less than 20 min. It's now holding steady again at 100. I haven't candled them in several days, should I candle tonight so I can compare again in 4-5 days? I had been planning on waiting until Monday which would be Day 14.
Since, from what I've read, the development process in fertile eggs begins at 90 degrees F I wouldn't worry too much if I were you. I've had power outages while incubating with no losses. If it were me I'd let the eggs restabilize for a few days before candling/opening the incubator any more than necessary. Best of luck with your hatch!
A week ago the power went out here. I had 10 little pullet eggs in the bator that were on day 14. This was a 8:30pm. I covered the bator with a down quilt and hoped the power would be back on soon. But it didn't happen cause the reason for the outage caused damage to equipment that only effected me and they had to come back out to fix it after everyone else had the power restored. Needless to say the power didn't come back on till 3:30am. They hatched yesterday and 8 of 10 made it. So don't give up hope.
Chicks should be fine. Keeping a jar of water, with lid, in an incubator as a heat sinc will help keep them warmer longer if the power goes out.
thats another reason to use mult. bulbs example 4 /25w instead of 1/100w.Also look into appliance bulbs and or traffic signal bulbs they last a lot longer.And i hear some of thos ceramic heat bulbs last long too. JM2C ....cva34
