MY MIRACLE CHICK...I apologize but I have to give a little background first. When I first started hatching eggs I was a nervous wreck like everyone else same thing years later when i started again...all the same questions and everything. After a while I decided to just buy the best incubator i had heard of https://www.gqfmfg.com/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=77# which should bring you to the link of the 1588 genesis hova bator (which i nicknamed my lazy incubator since I also bought the auto turner and the temp came preset and there was a digital thermometer/hygrometer on the top of it so all you had to do was add water) I only added the link because i noticed many on ebay say they are the 1588 but many looked different with different features, i am not assuming them to be fakes but possibly older versions. I am also sure there are probably better incubators out there but this one just seemed right for me. As hard as it was I decided no more worrying, I have enough of that with my four kids. So I put it on the floor in my bedroom added eggs as they were laid, made no record of date laid or anything(the only thing i tried to keep up with was the humidity which i ran around 40-60 most the time 60 but like i said i tried to keep up with it.) No candling no handling not turning off turner ever since i had no clue when or if they would hatch. And guess what my 50-60% hatch rate jumped up to 98%(actually 100% but i know no one would believe that). THIS STILL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MIRACLE HATCH SO PLEASE KEEP READING. I will go back to caps to title miracle hatch when i get to that point but still more background just hoping to ease some peoples worries about hatching eggs. Well I heard my first peep in the bunch and left it alone and did not worry like i used to. I figured if it was meant to be it would come out on its own and if not then there had to be a reason. Each hatching egg was different. Some would hatch within an hour or less after pipping and some would take up to 5 (yes i said 5 days). I had no problem with the turner still being on even as i let the little thing dry in the incubator before removing it. This was with all size chickens. Most would find an empty spot in the egg tray and stay there till removed and some would venture and sleep under and near the moving parts. Still no problems. WOW incubating became soooo much easier and i was quickly overrun by multitude of chicks . So it was time to put the incubator away until I could have a much larger coop and run built for my new crew. I live in a very populated neighborhood and luckily we have a rule that we can keep up to three hens as long as they were confined with adequate space, but absolutely no roosters. So unfortunately I had to give up almost all of my roos except this one that was so beautiful to me i just couldnt part with knowing he would most probably end up on someones dinner table. So I put him in a cage and brought him inside hoping I can find him a nice home where he doesnt have to be a nugget. He is a bearded d'uccle so of course he has very feathered feet. I also have a couple of seramas but i found it difficult to tell a male from a female unless the male was a crower. So now on to MY MIRACLE HATCHING CHICK. One morning I thought I heard a quiet crow from outside but new it wasnt my d'uccle because his crow is super loud and he was also inside. It had been a few months since he or any other roo that i knew of had been outside and none of my neighbors had roosters. So out of curiousity i took the incubator back out and placed the smallest egg (just one) that i got that morning into the incubator. Well I forgot about it. I needed a place to plug in my new printer and that was the only outlet it would reach so I unplugged the turner. When i did that I remembered the egg but was almost positive there was no way it would be fertile therefore no way it would hatch anyway and the turner was in the straight up position when i unplugged it. This was about 3 or 4 days after buying the printer. I never checked the humidity and my one year old had unplugged the incubator several times which I would notice on occasion and plug back in not knowing how long it had been off and the temp was usually around 75-80 by the time i noticed it. id just plug it back in and leave it alone. well about 3 or 4 days ago I heard this tiny tiny what sounded like squeaking noise and was like oh crap i must have mice in my walls and need to call an exterminator.....i had obviously completely forgotten about the egg at this point until yesterday after noon when i heard obvious chirping. Then i freaked realizing the humidity was so low in the incubator that the chick was most stuck since the membrane that i could see was very dry. So again due to the whole incubator neglect situation i took the egg into the bathroom and ran some warm water just around the membrane that was visible avoiding its little nostrils and started picking the shell off of the top of the egg where the air space is careful not to break the membrane just to see if it need more time in the incubator or if it was just stuck and doomed to die. after removing just the shell I dampened the top of the membrane just to see through it in order to see if i could still see blood vessels around him and sure enough i did. so i brought him back just like that and put him in the incubator and put exactly 12oz of water into the incubator but still realizing eventually i would have to remove him from the rest of the shell manually because the membrane would surely be stuck to him. this morning i checked again almost the same way by first placing warm water on the top membrane to see if i could see through it for blood vessels and not noticing any at this point i slowly peeled the air space membrane off to examine him closer just in case i wasnt seeing clearly through the air space. I saw small remnants of vessels but they looked empty for the most part so i started at his pip and put a small amout of warm water into the egg moving it around to wet the membrane around him so i wouldnt have to rip out any of his little feathers trying to remove a dry membrane. then i slowly started removing shell from around his pip ready to stop as soon as i saw any blood, no blood so i remove the rest of the shell but not the membrane(thank goodness i have reading glasses and long nails) again I wet the membrane and inspected the bottom of it the most to make sure he had absorbed everything left. All looked ok except a tiny piece of membrane stuck to his eye from where he pipped in a very dry incubator. so i released him from the membrane by lightly running a small stream of slightly warm water over his body again avoiding his nostrils and slid him from the membrane. at this point there was a very small amount of blood but other than that he looked ok but i still didnt have much hope. i placed him back into the incubator to dry and he is so far perfect. If you want to see a picture of him i made it my profile pic since i switched to a mac from a windows computer and not yet familiar enough with moving pics from a droid phone to mac computer so i just changed my profile pic via my phone. The medicine bottle is there for size comparison. obviously one of my seramas is a roo. Maybe you dont think this is so miraculous but after three cheap incubators with horrible turnouts following all of the rules then one fantastic one with awesome results and then this one being totally neglected i have named it miracle. Sorry for the long message but I just thought it was an awesome story and take away some of the worries and questions people have about when to assist or not when they have done everything correctly ...my advice is to follow the normal rules of hatching and dont rush them till they are ready just like a baby when you are pregnant you are set a date but it is never a guarantee. Good luck hatching and I must say do not ever do what i did. i was just lucky. this is definitely not a way to hatch chicks. oh and i do not have time to edit so please ignore any poor grammar,spelling, punctuation, etc
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