Shrink wrapped - explain this to me!

[Erin80]

We just performed and eggtopsy on a 23 day old brown egg that had stopped moving, and when I candled there was no visible air sac at all. The chick was completely shrink wrapped after internally pipping. What would cause this? The humidity has not gone below 65% during lockdown and has skyrocketed as high as 88% when a chick hatches. This chick did not externally pip at all - I did open the incubator to remove the two that had hatched, and also to add a bit of water to the incubator and adjust the thermometer I had sitting in there. How can opening the incubator shrink wrap a chick if there is no external pip yet? I'm so bummed! He was a fully formed little guy that had managed to internally pip - his air sac looked awesome on day 18 and he was moving all around. Please explain!!

 

[Erin80]

This has been the weirdest hatch. And it was my first!!

 

[JaeG]

It may not have been shrink wrapped - more likely that it died and that made the inner membrane shrink as the blood quickly disappears from the veins.

The transition from vascular absorption of oxygen to breathing on their own is when chicks can die. It's a really critical stage and sometimes they encounter problems and there's nothing you can do.

 

[fishin_dad]

It may not have been shrink wrapped - more likely that it died and that made the inner membrane shrink as the blood quickly disappears from the veins.

The transition from vascular absorption of oxygen to breathing on their own is when chicks can die. It's a really critical stage and sometimes they encounter problems and there's nothing you can do.

My air cells look good and I had humidity at 50% through day 18 and humidity has been around 70-75% the past couple of days. There was good movement on lockdown day but when I used a 1500 lumen light through the glass I am not seeing the movement I was seeing but I can still see good veins in most of the eggs. Could the high humidity hurt the chicks and caused them to quit? Lockdown for this batch was the day after a 3 hour power outage which resulted in lower temps and hard to control humidity.