Temperature drop to 78degrees F on day 17

[e'sbackyardchickens]

I was out of town overnight and my husband was taking care of the incubator. I just got home and the incubator was off, and when I plugged it back in the temperature, said seventy eight degrees. Is there any chance of survival? I have no way of knowing how long the incubator has been off.

 

[Airyaman]

You're probably OK believe it or not.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-13-hours-on-days-17-18.1669836/post-28690234

Now that is 13 hours so if more, who knows.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Is there any chance of survival?

Yes, there is a chance. But there is only one way to find out, try.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

 

[Airyaman]

Btw, my 14 chicks that went through 13 hours of the incubator being turned off are all a healthy 8-9 days old today. And man they eat alot already!

 

[SnackMeat]

You can candle the cold eggs and look for veins. No veins means they are dead. Don't worry about no movement at the moment. But veins are a good sign.

However I like to leave them in for twelve hours because I've had some surprises (no recovery from no veins, but a heat spike that I thought had killed an egg and the veins looked thin and that there were less of them. But then I put it back in the incubator and twelve hours later it was happily jumping around. Pretty sure that one hatched but I've only recently been labelling eggs as I am now doing weight loss checks.


Tomorrow candle again and I find pretty much by that point they should be moving around and the veins should be obvious. No movement, once again, is fine, but they are more likely to move around when warm than cold. But it can be comforting to see them doing their little sea monkey dance and realize they made it through.



As an extra word of comfort, I had been swapping duck eggs from one of two incubators and consolidating the live ones into one wet incubator. Well, somehow I must have candled one egg twice and one egg didn't get candled at all. I did one last check (before feeding the dead eggs to the possums) maybe 36 hours later (88* inside temp during the day, and at night it's probably 70-75*) and I had a dancing sea monkey!!!! Shocked the hell out of me.


It's now been two days and that egg is still one of my strongest dancers when candling (2nd or 3rd spot.) I don't know what will happen but from various debacles when incubating, no news is good news typically.

(The only exception to the no news is any heat spikes in the last week for chicken eggs. You can still have a live chicken but from reading this and experiencing this as I have messed with a DIY incubator in tandem with a bought one, you have to be prepared for foot problems.)