Should I help the eggs? PLEASE HELP!!

[Small town chicken farmer]

I have 7 quail eggs in the incubator right now. All have externally pipped but that was 36 hours ago. I have seen progress in some, but very little. My humidity has not dropped below 65% and I lowered my incubator temperature to 99* (F). Should I think about helping them? What should I do?

 

[maadroj]

People have different philosophies about helping chicks. Some think that if the chick is too weak to hatch, it will not thrive. Others think that there's a good chance an error in incubation is causing the difficulty and doesn't necessarily mean that the chick will be weak. I choose to help mine if they haven't made progress for at least 24 hours after pipping externally. I highly recommend reading this before acting: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/step-by-step-guide-to-assisted-hatching.64660/.

 

[FloorCandy]

I assisted a shrink wrapped chick after a day of no progress and he is totally fine and has thrived. He or she is on the small side at nearly 4 weeks, but still comparable to many I didn’t help, so probably just genetics. There were 3 in the same situation, only one was still alive to be able to be helped. He didn’t have splay or curled toes and is totally fine, and is one of the best flyers due to his smaller size haha.

 

[Small town chicken farmer]

I decided to partially open the eggs so the would still have to push themselves out. I had a mini humidifier and a spare heat lamp that I set up to do the operation and it went smoothly. I opened up some area around their beaks, but I found it interesting that even thought the shell was pipped and had a hole, the outer membrane was still fully intact. Did that still count as an external pip? (Don’t have picture of this)

 

[maadroj]

I don't know if the tough membrane is a sign of a humidity issue, but it's probably why they haven't been able to complete zipping. Keep watching to see if they make any progress now. If not, you can try zipping the rest of the way for them or removing the shell from the air bubble, then wait for them to kick themselves out.

 

[Fenrisulfr]

This might not help.
If they are too weak, you need to crack like a zipper ground... I have my technics from the youtouber "A chick called Albert" ... did it by myself like this several times, working great.

But be aware, that even then, they might not make it