Power Outage On Day 12

[almanquail]

Greetings,
I was searching some threads here, some of them mentioned to cool down the eggs during power outage in the early stages of incubation, I had a power outage at day 12 for about 10 hours, I actually did the opposite by wrapping the incubator with a blanket, by the time the power came back on the incubator showed 27 degrees celsius when restarted.
So in the first two weeks of incubation, in case of power outage do we need to cool the eggs or keep them warm?

 

[sourland]

Keep them warm. Cooling would make little sense. You did the correct thing.

 

[Tex452]

My little grandson turned the switch off to the socket that I had mine plugged in, I’m not sure but I think it was off close to 24 hours, I just let if finish out because there wasn’t but 5 days left, it was a really good hatch.
The power went out for 2 hours on another occasion and there wasn’t any problems.

 

[almanquail]

Keep them warm. Cooling would make little sense. You did the correct thing.

Searching online also suggested cooling the eggs, I would like to hear more about this issue.
This is from Google search:
If an incubator loses power during the early development stages (first 14 days), the best action depends on the outage length: for outages over two hours, quickly cool the eggs to between 41F-68F (eg, in a refrigerator) to suspend development. For shorter outages, avoid leaving the eggs in the(80.6F-95F) “zone of disproportionate development”

 

[Ridgerunner]

Do you have a link to that article? It could be an interesting read. I'm often interested in articles like that. It's the details that can get you.

I've had a few broody hens go to the wrong nest when incubating. I never know for sure how long they have been off but occasionally the eggs were very cold to the touch before I put her back on the correct nest. I haven't had any bad effects from that but it hasn't happened often.

My concern is that unless you know exactly what to do you may do more harm than good.

Several years back Brinsea was offering an incubator with a programmable daily cooling cycle. Not the same as you are talking about. They used a study on goose eggs to justify it. I saw that as more of a marketing ploy than something I'd want to try. But that is just my opinion.

 

[Debbie292d]

Greetings,
I was searching some threads here, some of them mentioned to cool down the eggs during power outage in the early stages of incubation, I had a power outage at day 12 for about 10 hours, I actually did the opposite by wrapping the incubator with a blanket, by the time the power came back on the incubator showed 27 degrees celsius when restarted.
So in the first two weeks of incubation, in case of power outage do we need to cool the eggs or keep them warm?

It is Brinsea suggesting the cooling here:

1. If eggs are likely to be cooled for longer periods (more than 2 hours), the way they should be treated depends upon their state of development. If the eggs are newly set, the best plan is to cool them fairly quickly down to 5 – 20°C (41 – 68°F) and hold them in this range – put them in the fridge! It may also be best to treat eggs this way up to about the 14th day, although greater losses must be expected if severe cooling occurs later in incubation.

Note the words I bolded. "It may..."

What this is doing is putting them back into a hibernation of sorts and apparently works best if they are in their first week of incubation.

Most of the time, we don't know how long the power will be out unless it was scheduled in advance, or we're told by the power company it will be X number of hours. If we are aware of a downed wire or a serious incident that has occurred, then we know this could take several hours.

You will find many success stories here of people having power outages as long as yours or even longer, and they still had a successful hatch just by shutting the vents and insulating their incubator to mitigate it from cooling down.

We have a generator, so I haven't had to worry about it, but if I did, I would have to know for certain that the outage would be well over two hours, and still don't think I'd go sticking my week or two-long incubated eggs in the refrigerator. Maybe I'd try half of them just to see!

I own three Brinsea 56EXs and love them, but I'm not so sure I'd jump to follow their advice on this wholeheartedly as I'm pretty much set in my incubating ways.

 

[kattabelly]

Do you have a link to that article? It could be an interesting read. I'm often interested in articles like that. It's the details that can get you.

Not the article you're asking for, but I read this article about hatch rates being increased by a short period of incubation before cool storage recently and found it interesting. It's from 2007 so I've been meaning to look to see what research has been done since.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Not the article you're asking for, but I read this article about hatch rates being increased by a short period of incubation before cool storage recently and found it interesting. It's from 2007 so I've been meaning to look to see what research has been done since.

Thanks, I've seen that one. The way I read it they are talking about preincubating eggs that will be stored for more than a week. I did not see much about storing them for less than a week and I did not see anything about cooling. Interestingly preincubation only works if you do it shortly after lay. If you wait a couple of days it does no good.

One thing I thought interesting is this section of the article:

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT AND THE ABILITY TO SURVIVE EGG STORAGE​

Some hens lay eggs within 24 hours of the yolk being released to start the internal egg making process. Some take longer. While going through the hen's internal egg making factory it is at incubation temperatures so it is developing. Apparently the more developed the embryo is at lay the more hatchable the egg, up to a certain point. So eggs laid by hens that take longer to get the egg through the internal egg making factory the more hatchable the egg because the embryo is more developed at lay.

If I were hatching 1,000,000 chicks each week the way some commercial hatcheries do I'd pay a lot more attention to this kind of stuff. Just a small percentage difference can mean a lot of chicks over time. But I'm not. I hatch maybe 45 chicks a year, half in my incubator and half with broody hens. I never store hatching eggs for more than a week. I don't see the benefit to me to work much harder than I do now, any potential percentage increase is probably not going to be noticeable. But academically I find this stuff fascinating.