Long time since posting! Missed you guys! My first set of quail chicks this year have begun hatching today. So far 2 have hatched on their own, and 2 assisted, and one I was too slow to assist. They get a pip hole and then get stuck. I’m not sure why the membranes always get dried out and sticky on my hatches. Looking for ideas. Temp is steady at 99.5. Humidity fluctuations between 45-55. I put it to about 65 at lockdown. The Bator is homemade out of a hard plastic cooler equipped with thermostat, turner and computer fan. TIA for your input friends
I don’t really have any advice, as I am all new to the quail world and only on my second hatch... But I have a feeling (totally not scientific.. just my 2 cents ) That many times the “stuck chics”.. that externally pip and just don’t hatch... may just be due to crappy genetics and maybe nothing you did wrong at all♀️ From my last hatch.. had a few like that.. and one I actually helped.. yup.. definitely all bad genetics in those and the little one I helped is my little handicap guy..
Nice to see you again—sorry your chicks are having trouble getting out. I've only done 3 hatches, but for my first two the humidity was close to yours, low 40s to 50s. Both times I had stuck chicks, sticky membranes, and "gluey" residue, no matter how high I cranked the lockdown humidity. This last hatch, I tried incubating "dry," with the humidity hovering around the mid 30s the whole time. Out of 26, none got stuck. To me, it seems that high humidity during early incubation leads to gummier membranes later on. Don't know if that's your precise issue, but I wanted to share my experience for reference. I hope you can get some more chicks out of this hatch!
Thanks for your insight I had one more hatch on her own sometime today. I opened the rest up to check for life and the rest seemed to have quit earlier or never got started. The eggs were shipped so I wasn’t expecting too much. I’ll experiment dry for the next one and see how I do.
@le_bwah, is correct in the assumption that high humidity causes 'stuck' chicks. I've be trying to explain that to people for several years. If your incubating at high %RH, then increase the humidity even more at lock down the embryos are surrounded by too much moisture and can not turn properly when they begin to zip...thus, causing a 'stuck' chick which is totally different from a 'shrink wrapped' one.
Thank you! I’ll aim for mid 30s next time. I’d rather have nice healthy chicks that can zip themselves. I really don’t like assisting, but I wanted to get as many chicks as possible from this hatch. The assisted ones always seem to have curled toes or splayed legs I find.
I did a dry hatch for my first time and 8 hatched out of 12. I had a still air styrofoam incubator and the humidity in the house was naturally about 40%. Kept the temp around 101.5, which ended up being somewhere between 100-101 down where the eggs were. I locked down on day 14 and bumped the humidity up to about 60% by pouring water in the vent holes about 2-3x a day once the plugs were out and decreased temp to 100. They all hatched within 3 hours on day 17, no assisted hatches.