Power went out in the middle of the night!!! NOOO!!!!!!

[2buckskins]

So i woke up at 6am to find the power out and my incubator at 78!

I expect I've lost all the eggs I was incubating, but I went ahead and turned on the generator and now the incubator is back up to almost 95 and working away. It's sooooo frustrating though- why does the power always have to go out in the middle of the night when the incubator is full???

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Power outages are harmless, assuming they don't last for days. Ive had them hatch after after a 24 hour outage. The hatch I just did, 17 chicks out of 24 eggs went threw a 7 hour outage.

 

[2buckskins]

Really? This is only my third time hatching, so I've never had a power outage before!! I candled all the eggs the night before so I know they were all good, I just really hope they can survive the cold dip!

I think from start to finish it will take 7 hours from when the temp started dropping to when it got back to normal...

 

[clairabean]

What day are you on?

It takes time for the internal egg temp to drop enough to kill them.

 

[ajacskr]

Don't worry about it. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had a broody hen get off the eggs at day 19. The eggs were outside in 35 degree weather, the eggs felt like ice cubes when I found then. I just knew they were all dead. I brought them in let them warm up, @ room temp for about an hour, there were so cold they started sweating in about 2 minutes. I already had an incubator running but did not want to put 35 degree eggs into 99 degrees, so I let them warm up some. Anyway 4 days later I had fuzzy butts.

What I'm saying is a drop to 78 IS NOT going to affect them. They are WAY tougher than they seem.

Good luck with your hatch.

Happy hatching to everyone.

 

[Suechick]

The resilience of eggs/chicks is sooo shocking! What an incredible system for making a new generation of animals. I'm inspired and in aw of the designer!

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Yea, all outages do is delay hatch time by about the same amount of time they were cold.

 

[dkvart1]

Quote:
What she said!

 

[galanie]

Quote:
What she said!

x2 !!

 

[2buckskins]

Wonderful!! They are one week away from their hatch date, so they are well developed and hopefully held their core temperature longer. My fingers are crossed that we still have a successful hatch!!

Thanks so much for the help/support! I'm feeling so much better about it now! Plus, I've got the generator is all gassed up and going strong, ready for however many hours/days PG+E will let us go without power here in the country...