Safety pips and quail

[GrandpaChainz]

Hey all. Moderately seasoned quail hatcher here. I'm actually hatching my own birds' eggs for the first time. They're still pretty young and I think I ran the humidity a touch too high for too long. The air cell is entirely too small. I hear that's a pretty common issue with eggs from younger birds.

When I hatched ducks, I was advised to give them a "safety hole" in case they had trouble externally pipping. They were fine, worked like a charm. Would it be advisable to do that for my quail since their air cell is so small? I'm on day 13 right now, so I figured the safety pip would probably happen on day 15.

I'm trying to rectify the issue. I read that if the air cell is this small you should just add no humidity and let them hatch out in dry air. Good advice?

 

[feedman77]

For me I would not put a safety pip. I would just reduce the humidity till they start to pip then raise it.

Quail are pretty resilient little hatches.

Good luck

 

[JaeG]

You'll be surprised how much those air cells will grow. I've had quail eggs on permanent high humidity (because I'm terrible about staggered hatching) and they've done just fine.

I thought one of my Button quail eggs had been internally pipped for too long recently so did a safety pip. Well, I was wrong and the baby was no where near ready to get going and it was touch and go whether it was going to be able to hatch despite 80% humidity before it dried out and I ended up having to help it hatch.