- Sep 23, 2012
- 22
- 0
- 22
I'm not sure how old the eggs were...but collected over a few days for sure since the neighbor doesnt have that many birds and he gave me a dozen eggs. Air cell definatly too big on some of them,hopefully I can get it corrected. Guess I can't do a "dry hatch" here, but have to add water all the time. I definatly have eggs at different development points as the dozen is not uniform when I candle them...I'm sure some are quitters.The air cell does get bigger as the chick grows but 1/2 way is too much at day 12. Here is what it should roughly look like:
I would up the humidity a little more in this case. Maybe high 30's-low 40's to try and get some moisture back into the eggs. When doing a dry hatch you want to keep the humidity in the low 30's. If it falls below 25% then you add just enough water to get it back up into the 30's. At lockdown you up the humidity to 55-60%. Here is a good article on DRY HATCHING
Don't close the vent plugs. If you have to get the humidity up you can close one of them.
Here are some pictures of egg candling at various stages of incubation. You can compare your eggs to these. Is there a possibility that the eggs were older and they started developing before you got them or were they freshly laid? The first eggs I ever hatched were collected over 5 days before I got them and 2 of the eggs hatched at day 16 and 17 of incubation. Way too early, but the chicks were fully formed and ready to hatch. Those 2 had started to grow before I even got them.
