Sad:( shrink wrapped or high humidity??

[CHCC-chicks]

First time incubator here...had two chick hatch out of 20...I was leaving them in the incubator to dry off avd I noticed lots of condensation on the window. They were in there about 10 hrs then I pulled them out. They were also breathing hard thought maybe they were too hot?? Waited and wAited. A day later I noticed one was having troubles, the sac was pretty hard to break thru. Long story short it died in the incubator in a damp cloth with the top portion of shell off. He was week, you couldn't even here him cheep. Finally I thought it was time to pull the plug late in the day on day 23. All but one chick look fully developed but all were dead in the shell! what did I do???? How can I manage and track humidity.. Felt like a horrible person my husband thinks I'm wacky for getting so upset over this.. Help!

 

[Ridgerunner]

http://urbanext.illinois.edu/eggs/res24-00.html

Try following this link. It doesn’t always work for me but it’s supposed to be an “Incubating Troubleshooting“ article. It gives a lot of things that could have happened.

I don’t know which incubator you used but one thing that comes to mind with that condensation is did you have the ventilation plugs out? The baby chicks, both in the shell and after they hatch, need fresh air to breathe, just like you do. If there was not enough fresh air, they may have suffocated. The reason the egg shell is porous is so air can move through it.

Did you have pointy side down and wide side up during incubation? Them laying on the side is OK too. But if pointy end is up, they don’t orient right and can’t internal pip.

Did you turn them, especially in the first couple of weeks of incubation? Body parts are forming then and turning helps them form in the right place. Often if the body parts don’t form in the right place the chick dies a little before hatch.

Then you have the humidity and temperature issues, but it does not sound like temperature was your problem. Humidity could be.

In general, if a chick fails to develop or dies in the first week of incubation it has something to do with what happened before incubation started. If it dies in the last week it usually has something to do with the actual incubation. Good luck on figuring it out so you can do better on your next hatch.

 

[CHCC-chicks]

I had a still air with a egg turner. Pointy end down. I pulled both my plugs. When the two hatch it instantly got super humid in there. So much that the chicks continued to look wet. Thanks for the link!