Seeking help: High egg mortality rate and peachick loss during breeding season!

[Faisal12]

I'm experiencing a problem during this breeding season... I've encountered significant losses with my eggs in the incubator, and I can't identify a clear cause for this issue. I had a total of over 20 eggs from two different pairs, but only 7 of them successfully hatched. Most of the remaining eggs that failed to hatch contained fully developed peachicks that died in the final stages. Recently, I assisted one chick in hatching, and it appeared healthy and fully developed, but tragically, it passed away just 30 minutes later.


Last year, when I used the same incubator for the first time, I managed to hatch 6 out of 7 eggs successfully. However, this year, I encountered these problems intermittently during the hatching process. It seems that things were not consistently like this in the past.


I'm seeking advice on whether there's anything I can do to save my remaining eggs. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Waterfaery]

I'm so sorry for your peachicks. I'm afraid I don't know much about hatching them in an incubator. Mine were all peahen raised.

I have hatched chicken chicks and I did a lot of troubleshooting for various issues. You can do an eggtopsy where you examine the chick to check things like if it had internally pipped or not, if it was malpositioned, if it had finished absorbing the egg yolk, that kind of thing. If you can see a pattern you might be able to figure it out. I'm sure it would be similar with peachicks although I think the positioning is different but I don't know.

I also know it's critical to get the humidity right. You can weigh the eggs and graph their weight loss over time so they lose the right percentage. If you do it throughout, you can adjust your humidity and then learn what settings are best for your climate. I have read that humidity is even more critical with peachicks than chicken chicks.

There is always the possibility of congenital issues. Is it your first time breeding these two particular pairs?

I imagine you probably already know more than I do so hopefully someone more experienced can help.

 

[Faisal12]

@Waterfaery Thanks for your reply!
Yes this is my first year breeding these two pairs.
I did opened all these eggs and I can see them fully grown.. the only thing I still remember is shrink wrapping for some of these eggs and the rest I didnt see any clear issues with them.

In order to improve the hatching conditions and ensure better humidity stability for future hatchings, I have decided to invest in a Brinsea incubator. I believe this will provide a more controlled environment and help prevent issues like shrink wrapping during the incubation process.

 

[KsKingBee]

I assume your humidity is too high causing the chick to either have too little room in the egg to swing its head and chip out or drown in excess fluid. Do some of them have their beak sticking out of the shell? That is a good indication. The better humidity control will help but you will still need to measure the weight loss during the process, you want to achieve a %15 total weight loss from set to hatch. The reason that peas are so expensive is because they are so hard to hatch.

 

[Faisal12]

@KsKingBee Thanks for your reply!
All of them didn't pip at all, but I noticed no movement when I candle the egg.
I opened these eggs to inspect if there was anything, some were shrink wrapping, others were normal to wet.