Share your shipped egg incubation stats so we can compare!

[artbykarenehaley]

It's lock down day for us, on our first batch of button quail eggs that we ordered from Burton's Pirogue Aviaries on ebay. I'm interested to see if anyone else is also incubating eggs recently shipped
Stats
Egg source: Burton's Pirogue Aviaries
Species: Button Quail
Origin: Missouri
Destination: Oregon
Shipping condition on arrival: box appeared to be in good condition, eggs were well wrapped. They were placed in a cardboard egg carton, surrounded by sawdust, wrapped inside a bubble mailer, which was placed inside a box padded with more bubble mailers and other packing materials.
Amount ordered: 15

Received: 20, two had hairline cracks in them only detected via candling prior to setting

Amount of eggs set: 18

Time allowed for these eggs to rest: 12 hours

Time and date set: 12:00 am March 12th

Incubator used: Little Giant Forced Air incubator with egg turner, quail rails installed.

Temperature: consistent 99.5 to 100.00 degrees

Humidity: has been between 60% to 70%

Fertility rate: so far all eggs have developed and appear to be alive. 4/18 have egg shells too dark to see through more than the pointy end, but veins are visible even on these dark eggs.

Hatch results: To Be Determined

Other notes: I have incubated eggs before but this is our first time using this incubator. So far it has been doing great. I have tested it with three other thermometers and humidity meters and it's sensor does appear to be reading accurately. It was a birthday present from my husband and I am so excited to hatch these eggs! The incubator is in our dining room which stays around 68 to 70 degrees.

I will update this thread as things progress and I hope others will share their experiences. Feel free to use the stat format I used above, I'll leave a blank version here. Of course change it if you can think of other things to include!

Stats:
Egg source:

Species and Breed:

Origin location:

Destination location:

Shipping condition on arrival:

Amount ordered:

Received:

Amount of eggs set:

Time allowed for these eggs to rest:

Time and date set:

Hatch result:

Incubator used:

Temperature:

Humidity:

Fertility rate:

Other notes:

 

[artbykarenehaley]

We now have a lot of quail chicks, and are still getting pipped eggs! We are up to ten that are hatched. Nine are in the brooder. One has just emerged from it's egg. They all have names already

george, looks like a cinnamon?

pip, first to hatch, March 28th at 2:30 ish

sonny, definitely a white button quail! So cute. More photos to come!

 

[cmobley]

I just done a lavender orpington hatch. I ordered 24 lavender eggs from meyer they sent 26 3 were broken. I set 23 eggs 16 made it to lock down and 13 hatched. I rested mine 24 hours and kept my humidity 45ish during incubation and 70ish during lockdown. I did hatch out a black with my lavenders I contacted meyer they offered a refund or store credit because their line is only suppose to throw lavenders. Overall im very happy with my purchase and how Meyer handled my few problems.

 

[artbykarenehaley]

I just done a lavender orpington hatch. I ordered 24 lavender eggs from meyer they sent 26 3 were broken. I set 23 eggs 16 made it to lock down and 13 hatched. I rested mine 24 hours and kept my humidity 45ish during incubation and 70ish during lockdown. I did hatch out a black with my lavenders I contacted meyer they offered a refund or store credit because their line is only suppose to throw lavenders. Overall im very happy with my purchase and how Meyer handled my few problems. View attachment 2583510

I'm glad you had success with your hatch! 13 is a pretty good amount. I wonder if the black chick is a mix up from a different batch of eggs, or if it came from their lavender orpington line as an outlier. It's good that they offered to refund or credit you based on that. I have been considering ordering eggs from Meyer, so thank you for sharing!

 

[artbykarenehaley]

We have now removed the egg turner and candled the eggs for the last time. All 18 that were set are still developing!

 

[artbykarenehaley]

The results of the White Faced Black Spanish chick hatch are in!
Set: 11
Made it to lock down: 10
Hatched: 7
One chick that hatched was culled due to an exposed spinal column and other deformities.
Currently alive and healthy: 6

The first pip! Day 20.

The same egg rolled itself over. It didn't hatch until day 21.

Noon of day 21. Suddenly there was a lot of activity in the incubator!

The first chick!

More were hatching as the day went on.

These six chicks are all happy and healthy!

WARNING this next section shows the chick with the exposed spinal column and two of the chicks that were dead in the shell. The third dead in shell chick smelled so badly I wouldn't even eggtopsy it. It was so strong the incubator smelled awful.

Chick that hatched live but with exposed spinal chord. It's legs were paralysed and eyes were slightly dislocated. I didn't get a photo of the eyes, this poor chick was in so much pain it was shaking. I had to put it out of its pain.

This chick was dead in it's shell. It developed a short, twisted upper beak and was missing at least one of its eyes, with an enlarged forehead. It's feet were thick and wings very short. What a strange deformity to see.

Other side of the same chick's head.

This chick unfortunately died in it's shell as well. It was malpositioned, and when I removed it from its shell I found that it was aligned with rump and yolk on the airsack. I am assuming it died in it's shell due to this.

All in all, the live chicks are so cute and lively and I'm quite happy with the results, six out of eleven seems pretty typical for shipped eggs.

As for sex of the chicks, they appear to all be female based on vent sexing and wing feathers sexing. It has been a long time since I have done either, so that remains to be seen!

 

[artbykarenehaley]

They are pipping right where the tips of these arrows are pointing. The one in the center of this photo has a white spot that you might mistake for the pip, but it's actually a very faint crack right where the arrow is pointing. I occasionally see it lift. This is the egg I have candled and this little baby is working hard in there! Come-on cutie, you can do it!

 

[artbykarenehaley]

As a quick update to the White Faced Black Spanish eggs:
Ten eggs made it to lockdown, with three that still have very saddled air sacs.
One of the eggs that has a normally developed air sac is moving around quite a lot right now! It is Day 20.

 

[LadyLaurelin]

Interested to know how it turned out!

 

[artbykarenehaley]

As an update to the shipped egg incubation, I want to mention that when I removed the quail rails and placed the eggs and secondary thermometer on the floor of the incubator, I had to increase the temperature on my incubator's thermostat from 99.5 to 103.0. the secondary thermometer is reading right at 99.5 to 100 now, and I do know this thermometer is accurate. I read to do this in the incubator's instructions and so far as long as I have been following the directions I received, everything has been going smoothly. I have also added a second sponge to increase the humidity based on the instructions that Burton's Pirogue Aviaries included with the eggs. The only variable that could potentially mess things up is that I received an order of chicken eggs earlier than I expected and ended up setting them in the incubator. I will detail that batch later on. Hopefully things go okay with those eggs. They were in a terribly battered box an I let them rest for 24 hours, then candled them to check on their air sacs situation. I have about four that look iffy.