oh what a night.
2 zipped and raced thru to hatching, 1 died after pipping thru the bottom of the egg. discovered it when the hatching chick rolled the egg over. I have to admit I went into panic mode. opened the incubator and checked each egg. 1 other had also picked the underside, the others who mostly had been pipped for 12-18 hours by now weren't doing anything. I cracked shell off the oldest pip and found dry stuck membrane enveloping the poor chick, so i broke its shell off a bit more and wet the membranes. no blood so opened them a bit and it hatched in 10 minutes. I was so worried now, the humidity was at 70% and above, there was some condensation on the viewing window, so i think it was right but they were drying out. frenzy of panic continued and I opened all the egg ends. all were dry white and shrink wrapping. only 1 bleed. left it with a wet cloth on it and he/she hatched this am. all the others are fine, navels good, sleepy but sit straight up when they hear anything...
So why dry chicks???
day 7 showed a bit too much wt loss. I was running dry but it was only 20-25% humidity in the incubator. I increased that to 35-40 after 2 days at 60% by lockdown the wt loss was good 12-13.5% on all but the 2 problem porous eggs (both needed help but are fine by the way). did read the article about 16% wt loss and not increasing humidity until the first pip. I caved on that and put it up on day 18.5, they begun pipping 12 hours later.
temps were 36.5-37.5.
8 out of 9 are alive and yes 6 i meddled but was it wrong?
Could that initial 7 days have set the trend?
PLEASE HELP WITH ANY IDEAS...i have 5 shipped eggs with bad air cells and am so worried about them.
Lea
The trio with their older "cousins", the Twilight Bantams (Twilight, Eve, Dawn and Dusk) which are around a month old but for whatever reason are very gentle with the trio.
