Quail egg advice needed!!!

[ZulQuail]

Hello! I’m new to hatching and I’m doing my first batch of quail eggs. One of my eggs hatched on day 18 but I’m now on day 20 and I haven’t heard any peeping or rocking from the rest of the eggs. I gently peeled away some shell from the part where the air cell is on one egg It turned out that it was alive and I could see vains so I immediately stopped peeling away shell and left it in the incubator. It hadn’t pipped yet and I’m worried that the membrane will dry out and the chick won’t hatch. I’ve been dampening the memebrain with a napkin with some luke warm water every now and then so it won’t dry out. I peeled away all the shell around the air cell and now i feel like such a horrible person for doing that when the chick is alive. Is there any way it can come out of the shell and hatch?

 

[Xouie]

Hrrrmmm... I’m assuming these are coturnix quail eggs. Is it possible your incubation temperature was a bit low? That would explain how you have live eggs that late.

if a chick has pipped — made a little dent or hole in the shell— you could assist the hatch. If you decide to do that, take a moment to do a search on BYC. There are a lot of posts to describe the process. Sometimes it’s hard to see pips on quail eggs. One of the things I don’t know is if you can assist an unpipped egg.

I wouldn’t use water to assist a hatch. What I use is a tiny dab of food oil (olive, coconut, etc) on a qtip.