I am thrilled to report that I successfully hatched my first egg today by hand. It had pipped yesterday and was shrink-wrapped. I used tweezers and kept keeping the area wet. All was a success in the end, but I do have a couple of questions. I had peeled the whole shell off leaving the membrane (think that's what it was) in place. There were a couple times where there was a tiny bit of blood from maybe me poking too hard??? That's question #1. Where is the blood coming from? Did I actually poke the chick to bleed?? In the end, when I was working on the top part of the shell, the membrane tore enough where I was able to slip it up over the chick's body to remove. However, had there not been any tears, what do you normally do next if you aren't suppose to tamper w/ the membrane? The chick was still stuck and not coming out. Should I have put it back in the incubator to break out of the membranes on it's own???? Or do you get it wet enough and try to tear the membranes off yourself? I think those were the only questions I got stumped on while I was "operating". I'm THRILLED to report that it worked out in the end. After I slid the membranes (if that's what it was) up over the baby chick, he/she laid motionless in the ball still for quite some time. I had laid her/him in the incubator. I ended up opening it again to make sure the beak wasn't buried, and then that's when the fun began and he/she uncurled and came to life a bit Sooo exciting! I posted a seperate thread w/ the little youtube video of him/her trying to stand, but I'll share it here too I do wish my husband would have been awake to get some pictures during the procedure and/or video-taped. It really really was amazing! I had been dragging my heals and not really looking forward to the procedure, but so glad I did it! Yay!!! Now, I just have to hope that my broody who is sitting on some eggs will hatch some babies soon so this one will have a friend or two! (there were two others that had pipped, but didn't make it...had I tried working on them yesterday, they would have had a chance at least...ahh..well..) https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=9316&p=1
I'll stay away from the why they were shrink-wrapped questions and concentrate on the blood question. Before a chick can safely hatch, it has to absorb the yolk and the blood vessels outside the chicken need to dry up. Theere are other things going on to between pip and zip. The chick is not just laying there resting. Sometimes a lot of that stuff happens after the internal pip. Sometimes most of it happens after external pip but before zip. And occasionally you will have one that is not quite finished with all this when it zips and comes out. Since it is very difficult to know what stage the pipped chick is actually at, I am very relunctant to help one. If it is too early, you can kill it. My guess is that the blood vessels had not totally dried up and you tore into one of those. You probably did not poke the chick too hard. That is only a guess though. I really don't know.
