setting eggs tonight!! anyone else?

[hdowden]

what type of incubator do you have? if the humidity is to high the chick can drown in the shell before it has a chance to pip and if to low the inner membrain can stick to the chick causeing it to pip but not turn to zip and then it would need to be assited ( it can take up to 24 hours for a chick to hatch).


i've looked up the same things about the "air cell"/"air space" and have read that they can still hatch but will be small and a lot of the time die which i'm hoping they hatch and will be just fine.

i actually switched bators already and have the eggs in there. with the kids messing with the other one temp in it went up to 114 for just a few secs. candled a few and see very very very little so i as of right now dont have high hopes for this hatch

 

[CALI CHICK]

candled a few and see very very very little so i as of right now dont have high hopes for this hatch

I hope they hatch out OK.

 

[hdowden]

i hope they hatch to

 

[LaynaDon95]

what type of incubator do you have? if the humidity is to high the chick can drown in the shell before it has a chance to pip and if to low the inner membrain can stick to the chick causeing it to pip but not turn to zip and then it would need to be assited ( it can take up to 24 hours for a chick to hatch).


i've looked up the same things about the "air cell"/"air space" and have read that they can still hatch but will be small and a lot of the time die which i'm hoping they hatch and will be just fine.

i actually switched bators already and have the eggs in there. with the kids messing with the other one temp in it went up to 114 for just a few secs. candled a few and see very very very little so i as of right now dont have high hopes for this hatch

Don't stress too hard. My incubator got on up in the 115 range and you caught yours even sooner than me. As far as the egg development goes, if things don't go well there's always next hatch. I'm sorry things aren't going as planned. I hope they hatch healthy, and fuzzy.

 

[LaynaDon95]

IMHO and from what I've read too high humidity will cause the chick to drown (because the egg actually needs to evaporate some of it's weight as it grows). Also, a mother hen doesn't put extra water underneath her nor did people in the ol' days know to increase humidity. The best indicator of humidity (without a hygrometer) should be the size of the aircell. On the 21st day, my diagram shows an aircell that takes up almost 1/3 of the egg. I've been looking up a bunch of threads on "weird or strange looking aircells" for hdowden and me-LOL. I'm very encouraged that others with this issue still seem to hatch their chicks just fine. (I'm working on a little egg cradle to sort of prop up my eggs that have air cells down a side.
There are so many helpful threads from people "like us

duh!" with answers to our questions. I'd suggest searching "humidity without a hygrometer" or something like that and see if anything comes up. But, you're a smart girl, I'm sure you already have!

So I'm going with too low is definitely better...
I'm using a Little Giant still air. The lady I'm borrowing it from said she put in 12 eggs and 2 hatched! They all fully developed and then failed to pip. I just reeeallly don't want that to happen to me. Maybe her humidity was too high then? There are tons of possibilities for why her hatch was so poor. I just really really really don't want that to happen to me!

I'm like a new mother! =P

 

[LaynaDon95]

I knew my math wasn't adding up!! I just recounted the eggs and there are 34! not 32! I thought I had counted wrong... They all look the same, which makes it very hard not to recount one or miss one. I'm glad to see I have more than I thought.

 

[LaGeniaLoca]

I wanted to share some information that I've learned from my previous hatches. You probably already know this, but by lockdown, you won't be able to see anything going on in the shell. The chick should fill up all the available space. Drowning in the shell occurs when the chick pips internally, but still has a lot of liquid in the shell (humidity too high). The liquid fills the air cell and they can't breathe. In this situation, and also with unusual air cells, if you can put the eggs in something, with the air cell tilted up, that should keep them in the right position to avoid problems. It will also keep them from being rolled around as the others hatch.

If you don't know what your humidity is, try using a wet-bulb thermometer. It works great and it's super easy to make your own. If humidity is too low and the chick is shrink-wrapped, it won't have the strength to get itself out, so you have to help. You can try helping the chick by misting the membrane to moisten it and wrapping the whole egg in damp paper towels (except the pipped area) to keep it from drying out in between its attempts to break out. That will give it some extra time to gather strength and keep pushing. However, if the chick has been pipped for 24 hours, with little to no progress, you can help it out by slowly breaking away the shell in the same way the chick would zip, giving it a chance to work on it, as well. Once it's zipped most of the way around, let the chick finish pushing itself out.

I also found out recently that the humidity isn't determined by how much water is in there, but by the surface area. Larger surface area equals higher humidity. Temperature spikes, whether high or low, don't necessarily doom your hatch unless it's for a prolonged time period. The sooner you catch it, the better your chances.

With all that said, any hatch, even a bad one, is a learning experience. Hopefully, having the information to counteract possible problems is encouraging to those who are nervous about their hatch.



Ok. Now, I go into my first lockdown tonight, with a few less eggs than I had last week, but those remaining are definitely good. I'm expecting:

1 LF Polish
3 LF Ameracauna
1 splash bantam cochin
2 mille fleur bantam cochin
1 serama
6 white silkies
5 blue/black silkies
3 splash silkies

Good luck to everyone!

 

[LaynaDon95]

Good information! Thank you very much for passing on your chicken wisdom.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Chicks hatching way early but not making it. I'm not sure what's going on. I only posted on this thread a couple times. I gave some eggs to a friend that had broodies. She put a couple under a silkie and the rest under a turkey. The ones under the turkey started hatching this morning. That's 3 days early.
She hasn't been watching but every time she goes in the turkey room there is a dead chick on the floor well away from the nest. The turkey is still sitting on 10 eggs and 3 are pipped, 1 is pipping at the small end. 1 of the dead chicks still had the yolk attached. Could she be crushing the eggs and discarding the chicks?
My friend is going to try to work where the turkey is for a while hoping to see what's going on.
The 2 eggs under the silkie seem to be OK.

 

[kathyinmo]

Some broodies do kill their chicks. Speaking from experience. If the chicks with the Silkie are okay, then it seems that may be what is happening.