Some questions on hatching eggs

[Hyroler]

The eggs are mostly from my chickens but there are four from a friend who lives nearby
they are golden wyandott, white rocks/golden wyandott, golden wyandott/ americauna,
and barred rock or buff/americauna.

Another one hatched and one pipped and there was some blood and it just kept poking its beak up through the same hole and peeping I chipped away a little for it after about four and a half hours and I keep wetting it. now its turned to start zipping but it isn't; any ideas on what I could do to help it?

it's not ready to hatch yet.leave it alone

 

[Hyroler]

It's turning the whole way around but not cutting the shell, please help

It's not ready leave it alone

 

[MelissaRose]

It suffocated itself already! but don't worry it suffocated before you wrote that, I was going to leave it anyway

 

[Hyroler]

Thanks so much Emmaxx for finding help,and thanks Pyxis for the idea! we cut the top of the egg and unfortunately when the chick turned halfway around and did not cut the shell it suffocated.

it doesnt matter how calculated temp and humidity gauges are when you open incubator heat and humidity drop.Every time you open incubator to inspect pip hole,candle egg or for any reason heat and humidity are lost.This traumatic for chick that is getting ready to hatch.That little pip hole in shell appears and people lose there minds.When pip hole stays the same for a hour panic sets in.So they decide to make hole little bigger.2 hours later still nothing make it bigger .2 more hours nothing yet time to take top of shell off.Now membrane exsposed and shrinkwrap begins 30 minutes later start full blown assisted hatch.Realize there is still large yolk sack still attached to chick.panic time try and put chick back into egg shell.30 minutes later chick is either deformed or flushed down toilet.What killed chick wasnt assisted hatch it was the 6 times incubator was opened prior to assisted hatch.Each time the incubator is opened and heat is lost chicks body uses energy to recover. that is delaying chicks ability to break out of shell.
sorry for any typos im to tired to proof read this

 

[Pyxis]

Sorry, I was missing alerts on this thread.

So it sounds like you put a thermometer in that read 110 F at one point. That's definitely very high - the temperature at which eggs die is 104 F. So I suspect you had a temp spike that resulted in the issues you experienced

You definitely should calibrate your hygrometer and thermometer as aart suggested if you haven't done so.

As to why the chick that suffocated didn't hatch, it could have been a lot of things. Maybe it didn't properly form an egg tooth, so it wasn't able to break the shell. Maybe it was malpositioned, perhaps with a foot partially over its head, thus preventing it from being able to break the shell. Maybe you had high temperatures the entire time without your knowledge, causing the chick to grow too large and causing it to not have enough space in the egg to properly flex and strike its beak against the shell with enough force to crack it.

Call ducks are notorious for this type of thing - their short necks and beaks mean they aren't able to strike the shell and break it, but instinct tells them to keep turning and trying, and eventually without assistance they turn, block their air supply, and suffocate. So what happened with this chick is not unprecedented.

Nothing you did caused it. Opening the incubator doesn't cause a perfectly healthy, correctly positioned chick to suddenly be unable to strike the shell hard enough to break it. The fact that it was turning tells you it wasn't shrinkwrapped, so that wasn't the issue. Were it shrinkwrapped, it wouldn't have been able to turn at all.

You did nothing wrong, this was just bad luck. Sorry for your loss

 

[WVduckchick]

I just read this entire thread (without jumping in before finding out what happened) and I have a question @MelissaRose was your humidity the same through the whole incubation time? If so, I would suspect that was your issue, along with possible low temps, which will cause a delayed hatch, and abnormal development.
I'm sorry for your losses, but congrats on the survivors! Post some pics when you get a chance.

 

[Hyroler]

Sorry, I was missing alerts on this thread.

So it sounds like you put a thermometer in that read 110 F at one point. That's definitely very high - the temperature at which eggs die is 104 F. So I suspect you had a temp spike that resulted in the issues you experienced

You definitely should calibrate your hygrometer and thermometer as aart suggested if you haven't done so.

As to why the chick that suffocated didn't hatch, it could have been a lot of things. Maybe it didn't properly form an egg tooth, so it wasn't able to break the shell. Maybe it was malpositioned, perhaps with a foot partially over its head, thus preventing it from being able to break the shell. Maybe you had high temperatures the entire time without your knowledge, causing the chick to grow too large and causing it to not have enough space in the egg to properly flex and strike its beak against the shell with enough force to crack it.

Call ducks are notorious for this type of thing - their short necks and beaks mean they aren't able to strike the shell and break it, but instinct tells them to keep turning and trying, and eventually without assistance they turn, block their air supply, and suffocate. So what happened with this chick is not unprecedented.

Nothing you did caused it. Opening the incubator doesn't cause a perfectly healthy, correctly positioned chick to suddenly be unable to strike the shell hard enough to break it. The fact that it was turning tells you it wasn't shrinkwrapped, so that wasn't the issue. Were it shrinkwrapped, it wouldn't have been able to turn at all.

You did nothing wrong, this was just bad luck. Sorry for your loss

Constantly opening incubator will cause perfectly healthy chick to not have strength to crack shell.A hatching chick burns energy fast that's why when hatching is done in small interval with lots of resting in between.If they have to use energy adjusting to tempature change they have that much less energy to break out of egg.I not blaming this person for his chicks not hatching.In saying in general people especially new at incubating get too excited when they see pip in egg shell.Then when chick doesn't do anything for few hours after that first pip hole they start to worry.That's when they start opening incubator and messing with eggs.Biggest cause of shrink wrapping is from people picking at shell exposing the membrane.Once there is big area of membrane exposed there is no way for chick to stretch it enough to break through.membrane can't stretch when shell is all around it but with no shell it's like elasticI and chick has no way to break thru.

 

[Hyroler]

I decided to crack one now because I figured it was dead, it was here's a pictureView attachment 1343386

The chick in that picture had,
A lot of yolk left it drowned in egg probably day 19 or 20.

 

[Pyxis]

Constantly opening incubator will cause perfectly healthy chick to not have strength to crack shell.A hatching chick burns energy fast that's why when hatching is done in small interval with lots of resting in between.If they have to use energy adjusting to tempature change they have that much less energy to break out of egg.I not blaming this person for his chicks not hatching.In saying in general people especially new at incubating get too excited when they see pip in egg shell.Then when chick doesn't do anything for few hours after that first pip hole they start to worry.That's when they start opening incubator and messing with eggs.Biggest cause of shrink wrapping is from people picking at shell exposing the membrane.Once there is big area of membrane exposed there is no way for chick to stretch it enough to break through.membrane can't stretch when shell is all around it but with no shell it's like elasticI and chick has no way to break thru.

Yes, assisting too soon is never something you want to do. That's why when assisting I always advise to allow 24 hours from the time of the external pip before starting an assist. At that point, opening only the shell over the air cell allows you to see what's going on with a chick without the danger of causing any problems. Then, you can apply coconut oil or something similar to the membrane to keep it moist. At that point, if the chick is able, when it's ready it will simply push itself right out through the air cell when it's good to go. Or, you might get in there to find it was malpositioned, or grew too large, etc etc which caused it to be unable to hatch, in which case had you not stepped it, a perfectly healthy chick would have died.

In this particular case, the chick had started to turn in its shell, which they only do once they're ready to hatch. At that point, the proper thing to do is to help it, or, as happened in this case, they cut off their air supply and die.

I've been hatching for about five years now and have hatched hundreds, probably thousands, of chicks, opening the incubator during hatch multiple times in nearly every hatch, and I've never had a case of opening the incubator causing a chick to not be able to break the shell. Broodies also get off their eggs during this time, and it doesn't cause their chicks to not be able to break the shell. So in my personal experience, I've never had a quick opening of the incubator, even multiple times during one hatch, cause a healthy chick that was in the correct position not be able to break the shell.

 

[Emmaxx]

@Hyroler I understand the point you're trying to make, but I was here from early on and never saw anything from Melissa that suggested she panicked and jumped in at the first sign of a pip, nor that she was constantly opening up her incubator unnecessarily (if she had I'm sure I and others would have told her stop!), so what you're saying is rather irrelevant to this situation and so I don't think your comments come across in the best tone.
Maybe your incubator isn't very good at recovering lost heat and humidity if it can have such a devastating affect on the hatching eggs so quickly! I know mine recovers extremely quickly. Every situation is different and unique when there are so many variables that can affect hatch so it's not always helpful to make broad statements when you can't be sure you have all the relevant information.