temp dropped to 90

[debbyluvschickens]

oh no, my temp dropped to 90!! The eggs do not feel warm to the touch...I am not completely sure my thermometer is accurate....will the chicks still hatch?? it is day 15. BTW I just swapped thermometers to see if that one is right, I fear that it dropped lower than 90...my first time incubating in about 8 years and this is my welcome back.

 

[lsuphillier1]

If it was just for a few hours, they should be fine. They may however hatch a day late.

 

[Broke Down Ranch]

That little of a drop won't hurt them at all if they are viable to begin with. We lost power due to a storm a couple of weeks ago and was without elec for about 16 hours. My incubator got down to 72º - every guinea egg I had in there hatched and I still had a great hatch on the chicken eggs.....and they were only late by a few hours.

 

[debbyluvschickens]

my thermometer was wrong, it was around 80 i think, the temp is already going back up. When I turned them last night around 10 they were warm to the touch, and then this morning around 9 they were cool. I do not know how long my thermometer has been wrong, or why the temp dropped, I am so worried!! I think I need to get a better bator.

 

[Farmer Kitty]

Info on power outages during Incubation.
From- A Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow

The more valuable your hatching eggs are, the more likely it is that the electricity will go out during incubation. If you have an uninterruptable power source (UPS) for your computer or other electronic equipment, consider disconnecting the usual equipment and using the UPS to power your incubator. If the outage comtinues beyond its capacity to keep your incubator running, or you don't have an UPS, open the incubator and let the eggs cool until the power goes back on.

Trying to keep the eggs warm is likely to cause abnormal embryo development. Furthermore, if you close the vents or wrap the incubator with blankets in your attempt to keep eggs warm, a greater danger than temperature loss is oxygen deprivation. Developing embryos use up oxygen rather rapidly, and the oxygen level may soon fall below that necessary to keep them alive.

As soon as the power goes back on, close the incubator and continue operating it as usual. The effect of the outage on your hatch will depend on how long the power was out and on how long the eggs had been incubated before the outage. A power failure of up to 12 hours may not significally affect the hatch (except to delay it somewhat), especially if the outage occurred during the early incubation, when cooled embryos naturally tend to go dormant. Embryos that are close to term generate enough heat to carry them through a short-term outage.

 

[rooster-red]

Can you candle the eggs to see if you still have live embryos?

 

[jdypat]

my momma hen was sitting on 10 eggs and one morning i came out to check on her and she was on the wrong nest.. an empty nest. and there laid her eggs cold so very cold..
i just stood there.. unable to breathe for awhile.. then i put her on the right nest and did the only thing i could do. Wait.
8 of them hatched.
now ive another problem. 4 of them were put under her after the first day of brooding.
so when the first four were hatched, I took them and put them under a heat bulb inside to await their siblings.
when i placed the first ones with the second ones, the hen tried hard to kill them. in fact she did so much damage to one chicks head i feared there was no way it could live. its eyes seemed to be damaged very badly.
i took it inside and cleaned it and put neo sporin on it and kept the eyes damp and it did great.
now i have to remove the 4 chicks from the mother and put them in with the four scorned chicks. what do I do with the momma? shes gonna be upset. im thinking dinner tomorrow. it makes me hate the momma who does that to her very own baby.

 

[jdypat]

am i a "professionall" or what? ha

 

[debbyluvschickens]

LOL chickens can be crazy at times. I have lots of experience with hens raising their own, but not too much with incubating.

As for candling, the eggs are brown, can I still see inside? Also what do I look for? I have done this with duck eggs a looong time ago, but dont really remember much.

 

[debbyluvschickens]

temp is 100 now. I tried candling them but my light isnt very good, and the shells are dark. I couldnt see anything, but I have 4 duck eggs in there, and I could see a dark blob on one side of each egg. What does this mean?