So it's been at least 24 hours since the pip. He has made it larger since last night. He is moving inside the egg still, so I know he is alive. How long shuould I wait until I help the little guy out? It is so hard to just watch. I have the live webcam up. The link is in my signature. What to do?!?!?
What day is he actually on? Is this day 21 now, or later than 21? It's really tough to know when to help, because if he hasn't absorbed the yolk sac yet, or if the blood vessels in the membrane haven't receded yet, you could kill him. But I can tell you what I have had to do for every backwards pipper. I help them first by making the pip hole a bit larger. I use tweezers to peel away a few chips of shell, without tearing any of the membrane. Then I give them a little time to see if that was all they needed. If not, then I will try peeling just a tiny bit of the membrane away. I do it SUPER slowly, and if it begins to bleed AT ALL, the little guy is not ready and I put it back in the incubator and wait. There's always a little blood left in the membrane, so just seeing a little red is not bad. But if a bead of blood actually wells up out of the membrane, that's active bleeding and that's bad. If there's no bleeding, and he still can't hatch, I will chip away a ring of shell all the way around the egg, so it's just membrane holding the pointy end of the shell to the rest of the egg. Again, sometimes that's all they need and the chick can kick free. But if the membrane has dried out too much, I also have to peel away more membrane. Once the chick starts to struggle to free itself, I always set it back in the incubator and see if it can do the rest of the job itself. Usually the chick will be encouraged by all of this and will help itself along. I just do everything in tiny stages, and then give the chick a chance to finish the job itself. All of this is risky because the more shell you chip away, the more the membrane dries out and that makes it harder for the chick to get out, too. So once you make the decision to start helping, be sure you can tend to the process for the next few hours, in case you have to wait, try again, wait some more, try again, etc. I've helped about five backwards pippers out this way, and they've all survived, but I get scared every time I do it!
Wiggling and cheeping is good. Especially if it looks like he is trying to rotate himself inside the egg. If he was facing the other way, he'd be rotating and pipping all around the egg to get out. So if it looks like he is trying to rotate and pip (you can see them do this when they've torn away the membrane a bit, they push really hard with their legs to try and shift position) then it means he's ready to come out and is trying to do it himself. When they're backwards they just don't seem to have enough room to rotate this way, though, so they get exhausted after a while from trying.
. Everything is welcome at this point.
