Question about Incubating

[isadream]

Hi,

I have been hatching turkey eggs all spring and so far I have had good luck. Out of over 30 eggs I had only lost 2 or 3. However on May 2nd I added 10 eggs to the incubator and so far out of those 10 5 of my eggs quit developing. 5 are still alive as I can see the movement of the chick in them. These are due to hatch Saturday. I am curious if I did something wrong to cause this or what happened as I am very disappointed. The only thing I can think of is that about a week ago I had taken all the eggs out of the incubator and cleaned it because with all the other chicks that had hatched there were little pieces of egg shell and it had started to smell. I am just curious if maybe me doing this could have caused my eggs to die or is it just something that happened. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also if taking the eggs out to clean the bator is bad what should I do to prevent it from getting icky? Thanks,

Renee

 

[Dirt Road]

Simply not enough info to give you the kind of answer I expect you want. However, if the incubator was starting to smell bad, and there were chips of shell left in it from previous hatches I would GUESS that you are getting a bacterial buildup in the machine. Once that reaches a certain level, it can attack a perfectly healthy egg and overcome all it's natural defenses. I would suggest that between hatches, you thoroughly clean and disinfect the machine. That is one of the best reasons to use a separate hatcher, it can be disinfected after each hatch.

Jim