Ring of Death?

[DesertLab]

Is this what I have read about when the egg gets bacteria inside the shell? I could see the line when I candled them. The yokes had no form at all. I have never used an incubator before. I am reading as much as I can and trying to learn as I go. However, my guinea hens are such very, very bad parents I thought I would give it a try. If I do not.. all of the eggs will be lost. My birds flat our r.e.f.u.s.e to sit on the nest for more than half an hour. All advice is welcome =)

 

[jridgway1972]

Did you wait until there were a bunch of eggs before taking them? I did not. I thought my hen was a bad parent for leaving the nest, plus she made a nest by the highway. But I haven't had luck with incubation last year with eggs from a hen that has since perished, or with the two eggs I tried this year. So I have let nature take its course. When there were 18 eggs in the nest which were laid by her and another hen, "Little Momma" began to stay on the nest and in the three weeks I have been checking on her, I swear she has not left it once, not even in bad bad rainstorms, until this morning, but she is back on the nest now. I'm hoping to see keets soon, but trying to figure out how to grab the keets before they get wet. or run over. It's very hard for me to let nature take it's course.

I know you should sanitize your hands before handling/turning eggs. and make sure the incubator stays clean.I just use the same sanitizer I use before giving my granddaughter who has cystic fibrosis food, medicine or anything. Same principle holds for birds, animals and people. We can transfer bacteria to other species and .they to us.


Hopefully by now you have gotten better eggs. I feel your pain on the "learning as you go!" I'm just glad I found this site.

 

[DesertLab]

My guines hens found the nest I made for them in the kennel very acceptable and they have been using it. Before I made the nest.. they were leaving eggs all over the kennel. I made them a nest, put the eggs in it, and left the hens locked in the kennel. They started laying eggs in the nest. They had over 40 eggs in it and refused to sit on it. I didn't have an incubator at first so I just left all the eggs with the hens figuring they would take care of them and hatch them... that didn't work. When I got an incubator I took a bunch of the eggs out (some were 3 weeks old) and put them in the incubator. 20 of the eggs hatched and I did everything wrong. After about a month.. Matilda started to sit on the nest... I left the kennel closed so they couldn't go out and abandon the nest. Although people will tell you not to chase the bird off of the nest or the hen may abandon the nest ... I do chase her off the nest to take the fresh eggs. We leave the kennel doors closed so the hen has nothing else to do but sit on the nest. We do let the other birds out for the day. Our kennel is critter proof and is wrapped in wood around the bottom (and the wood is burried in the dirt 4 inches) so I was puzzled when the keet vanished... the kennels was closed. We leave dud eggs in the nest inplace of the ones taken. A few days ago my hen hatched a keet.. I was Shocked!! It appears the other 3 birds (including her mother) ate her. So, my hens don't get the parent of the week, month or year award. After the keet vanished I switched out the rest of the eggs the hen was sitting on for eggs I know are duds. I put the eggs into the incubator. Four of them hatched (one died) and the other three are doing great. Four of the eggs were clearly older than the others.. or only 4 of them were good. I don't know how old the other eggs are or if they are any good. because both hens started laying in the nest again. I put the eggs I collected into the incubator with a number on them and will check them in a week to see if anything is going on in there.

I had to have a way to keep track of the eggs. What I do is I put a number ontop of each egg in pencil. On a note pad I write down when the egg was laid, collected and brought into the house, put into the incubator, and make notes of what I see in each egg when I candle them. I try to pick the eggs up once a day. I have dud eggs in the nest (they have a black strip on them) so I can tell what eggs are new and what ones are not. The dud eggs keep the hens laying in the nest. When I get about 8 to 14 eggs I put them into the incubator as a group. I am trying to put eggs into the incubator that are no older than 10 days.

This site has been very, very helpful. I have managed to assist in hatching a few eggs too. I have to give a giant shout out to Peeps. I have gotten the best advice from Peeps. She really has taught me so much and I am sure without her outstanding help and advice I would not be much better off than after my first hatch. I took her excellent advice and bought a new incubator.. and not the $800 Dickey's I was about to buy. The Dickey's would have been way more incubator than I need at this point.

All the best to you =)

 

[Hotcookie]

My females are very good mothers, and I've been extremely lucky they lay their eggs in the nest boxes inside their coop. Last year alone, they had 3 successful hatchings by themselves, so I wondered what was going on this spring when they had over 130 eggs between four different nest boxes. Why weren't they going broody yet? All of a sudden, once the weather warmed up sufficiently, they decided to start sitting on the eggs. I currently have 5 females sitting on 4 nests inside their coop - two girls are sitting side-by-side on one of them. From previous hatchings, I've learned the mama will stop sitting on the eggs after some have hatched out - so I'm not looking for "quantity" amounts of keets. Heaven only knows - I really don't need anymore at this time! lol
Maybe you should just give your girls some time to go broody naturally without forcing them to stay inside the coop..... oh well - just my two cents worth!

 

[DesertLab]

The biggest problem we have is all of the critters that like to eat our gang. We have a quarter horse farm and are set back in the woods. We have so many owls and foxes I think we must be on a wild life map as a place to stop over. If our girls are not closed up for the night someone usually end up as hors d'oeuvre. We have a 'people' door into our pen and a 'fly in only' door that is 8 feet off of the ground. We lost one of our girls a month or so ago when someone came in the 'fly in door' and took Blue Two right off of her nest. Although grey foxes can climb.. they would not be able to climb to the fly in door so we think it was an owl. The raccoons appreciate if someone leaves an egg in the yard... far easier to get than trying to take one from a dive bommer blue jay. We try to let the birds go broody.. they will sit on the nest. However, after Matilda ate her keet.. we are going to take eggs away when we are putting a group into the incubator. When the 'bator is full she can sit on any left... she doesn't score high in "parent of the year".

All the best =)