Quail egg incubation concerns

[Erika Guerrero]

So this is my second time attempting to hatch quails. The first time I attempted I had 18 eggs and used a science lab incubator, but had no hatches, so I went to the store to buy an actual bird incubator. I set a new dozen of quail eggs into the incubator and read lots of online forums on how to properly incubate the eggs. I turns the eggs 3 times a day and monitored the humidity( which was kept at 47-50%) and temperature. Once it came down to the lock down day I stopped opening the incubator and waited until day 20 to check if any signs of life were present. I didn’t see any movement when I tried the float test so figured the eggs were all duds becuase they were all high floaters. So I took them out of the incubator and left them out for a day. One day later I decided to candle the eggs before I threw them out and noticed that one of the eggs had a developed chick (or I think it did) and I started to freak out, so I put the eggs back in the incubator, but i doubt it’ll hatch. Any ideas?

 

[paneubert]

How sure are you about the humidity? If they are all high floating, that to me means the air cell was larger than you want it.

 

[Erika Guerrero]

How sure are you about the humidity? If they are all high floating, that to me means the air cell was larger than you want it.

Hmm I didn’t think about that. So if my humidity was too low, could the quail still have developed? I read reviews for my incubator and they weren’t so good and apparently the humidity readings were known to be off. Thanks, I’m going to crack the egg open to see what happened and what’s inside.

 

[paneubert]

They can and will still develop with lower humidity, but there is a much higher chance of the chicks being shrink wrapped when hatching.