Questions about hatching different breeds

[Turnipseed]

I'm 48 hours out from the hatch day on the eggs I have been incubating and so far I've gotten:
4 out of 5 Marans
2 out of 2 Olive Eggers (F2 Marans cross)
1 out of 5 Cream Legbars (this chick pipped and zipped in literally 3 minutes)
1 out of 3 Cochins (this chick had a very difficult hatch and a significant umbilical bleed, which I treated with iodine and cornstarch. She spent her first day very weak, sleeping on her back and looking, well... dead, but has since perked up a lot and was able to join the others in the brooder.)

I started with six eggs of each breed, all were kept until day 18 at which point only the very obviously infertile from the beginning ones were discarded (and I didn't even try to discard any marans except the very obviously cracked one). The eggs were obtained locally, with the Cochins coming from one breeder and everything else from another. I am using a Brinsea Octagon 20 incubator and it has been working very well except for a problem with the humidity pump on day 21 where the tube somehow collapsed and the humidity dropped to 45% for no longer than two hours. At this point one chick had hatched and none of the other had pipped yet. All the chicks other than the Cochin appear healthy and lively with no deformities or weaknesses. This is my first ever hatch, as well as first ever experience even being in the same room with a chicken.

So, considering the Marans and Marans crosses seem to have had a much better hatch experience than the rest, my questions are...
1.) Is it normal for Cochins and Legbars to take longer to hatch?
2.) If so, approximately when should I expect the rest of my eggs to start hatching?
3.) How many more days should I leave them in the incubator before I give up on them?
4.) If there is little chance of them hatching considering this is going on day 3 post hatch day, is there anything I might have done wrong that would affect some specific breeds but not others?
5.) At this point all the chicks are in the brooder as I had to remove them early in order to let the Cochin recuperate alone. Will this affect the unhatched ones? should I return someone to the brooder to peep at them?

I would appreciate any and all other advice you might have for me, thanks in advance!

 

[Ridgerunner]

1.) Is it normal for Cochins and Legbars to take longer to hatch?
No

2.) If so, approximately when should I expect the rest of my eggs to start hatching?


3.) How many more days should I leave them in the incubator before I give up on them?

Did you count the days right? It's a pretty common mistake. An egg does not have a day's worth of development the instant it is set in the incubator. It takes 24 hours get a day's worth of development. So you say one 24 hours after they go in. An easy way to check your counting is that the day of the week they go in is the day of the week the 21 days is up. If you set them on a Friday they should hatch on a Friday.

For various reasons that 21 day thing is a rough approximation. For many different reasons they can be early or late, often two full days either way. Since so many have already hatched I'd give them another couple of days as long as the incubator does not start stinking. I don't expect much, depending ion how long it's been since the last one hatched but you will have done all you can.

4.) If there is little chance of them hatching considering this is going on day 3 post hatch day, is there anything I might have done wrong that would affect some specific breeds but not others?

Not as far as incubation. One of the factors in them hatching is how and how long they were stored and handled before incubation started. if different breeds were handled differently that can have an effect. Some of those factors are if the eggs were shaken, stored hot or cold or they go through warming/cooling cycles, or high or low humidity. Heredity can make a difference, not because of breed but because of strain. If you take a flock of Marans and consistently select your breeders from the ones that hatch early in a few generations you will have a flock that normally hatches early. if you select your breeders from the ones that hatch late you can move hatch time in that direction.

Nothing to do with breeds but if your hatch is consistently late it probably means your incubator is running a tad cool. You can still get great hatch rates even if it is off a bit. I could not tell when they hatched relative to the 21 days, you Marans and OE numbers look good. I would not change anything this time but see what happens next time before you tweak it.

5.) At this point all the chicks are in the brooder as I had to remove them early in order to let the Cochin recuperate alone. Will this affect the unhatched ones? should I return someone to the brooder to peep at them?

Personally i would not though it should not hurt. Some people believe it helps tell the later ones to hatch now, I think it is quite possible that is correct. But if you have any left they've already had that encouragement. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to this.

 

[Turnipseed]

Thank you so much for the thorough response! Lol, I did get the days wrong, not only did I start counting when I set them but I also somehow lost a day, so I expected hatching to start on Wednesday and when that didn't happen I had to go back and count, so Friday should be accurate (I hope). The first chick to hatch came out about 5 hours into day 21, and the rest followed in the three hours after that. One Marans hatched last night(on day 22) and the last Marans is trying to hatch very slowly this morning. Still no sign of the cochins or legbars, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[Altfrizzle]

Another factor that I don't see mentioned much here is that different egg types and variations have shell variations.

Humidity is controlled to effect weight loss of the egg during incubation, and keeping the humidity "just right" for one batch of eggs does not ensure that it's just right for other kinds of eggs in the same hatch. Some or much more porous than others, so their humidity needs can be very different.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Another factor that I don't see mentioned much here is that different egg types and variations have shell variations.

Humidity is controlled to effect weight loss of the egg during incubation, and keeping the humidity "just right" for one batch of eggs does not ensure that it's just right for other kinds of eggs in the same hatch. Some or much more porous than others, so their humidity needs can be very different.

Different hens of the same breed can lay eggs with different porosity so you can get different humidity losses. Eggs laid by a hen later in her egg laying cycle can have a difference in the thickness of the white which will affect how fast humidity is lost. An egg that has been stored for a while will have already lost moisture by the time incubation starts. it's very fortunate that Nature made a fairly wide range of humidity/moisture loss to work.

It's not a breed thing. Hens of the same breed can have these variations.

 

[Altfrizzle]

True.