The Great Egg Shipping Experiment!

[Knittycat]

Awwww, darnit. You mentioned Mahonri's Easter Hatch, and I realized that now I have an incubator, I'd be able to participate! Only to discover the eggs I'm buying will arrive a week too late to really participate.

 

[Wisher1000]

Don't fret, Knitty Cat, you can join in a week late, it might knock you out of some of the contests, but you can participate enough to have loads of fun. That hatch is HUGE! There will be a smaller, more casual one right after that, called the Cinco de Mayo Turkey Hatch ( not limited to turkeys.) That one is fun, too.

 

[hokankai]

This will be interesting! I really want to incubate some hatched eggs myself. I've had shipped eggs incubated for me, and only 1 hatched. I'm wondering how it'll be with me packing them myself...

Oh! And ALWAYS calibrate your thermometers and hygrometers! There are directions for both somewhere on this site. I found that my digital therm/hygrometer was way inaccurate and my aquarium thermometer/dial hygrometer were a lot closer.

 

[pinky67]

Oh, Pinky, be carefull! My first hatch-a-long (Mahonri's 2012 Easter Hatch) I had a 0% hatch rate. I later discovered that my two thermometers, one digital, one mercury, both read exactly 2 degrees low. The entire hatch, my eggs were in 101.7 temps. I never dreamed they could both be wrong yet exactly the same. I COOKED my poor eggies!

So sad! I'm not worried about the temp so much, Brinsea is pretty darn good at holding the temp, just the humidity. I think I will keep it at about 50 for now.

 

[pinky67]

Thank you! Yes, I think Brinsea does a great job w temp controI. I think I need to find a good hygrometer.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Alright wisher... I have some data. Very limited.

The 3 eggs from you under my brrrrdy I candled today with the app for my droid known as "brightest flashlight." I can spot moose in New Brunswick with that puppy.

Anyway, I was certain there was nothing going on in any of them. I confirmed by cracking them over the poop pile. No blood at all. Never developed.

Now... my brrrdy was never truly broody, didn't pluck her chest feathers, so probably the eggs didn't get warm enough to start developing.

The two polish that I had thrown under her and hadn't developed in the incubator (but I wasn't ready to give up on them yet) had no development upon opening, either.

I chose to candle those today because for some reason it's 44 degrees in January in Maine. Brrrdy is up on her roost tonight. I was going to have a brrrdy stand in (Ginger, who is fighting peritonitis and has such a swollen abdomen she can't jump on the roost)... but she can hardly lay down either and I wanted to make sure if I was making her lay on eggs uncomfortably, it was for good cause. BF will need to cull her, soon, if she doesn't get better.

 

[Wisher1000]

Well, Brrrdy never promised you a rose garden!

So you're three down out of ... 15? Was it? But no indication that it was a problem with the shipping, but it is possible they weren't fertile. What color were those three? How did the air cells look?

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Well, Brrrdy never promised you a rose garden!

So you're three down out of ... 15? Was it? But no indication that it was a problem with the shipping, but it is possible they weren't fertile. What color were those three? How did the air cells look?

They were all various shades of brown. Two mid dark, one light dark. I plead the 5th on the air cells... I honestly have no idea what I'm looking for.

I was cracking them over the poop pile, so the yolk broke, couldn't tell if they were fertile or not.

I am certain there's some in the incubator, developing. I just don't think my brrrdy conditions were viable for life. I don't often get 100% failure (at hatching. Now life... that's a different story).

 

[Wisher1000]

Hey, don't sweat it, my first hatch-a-long was 100% EPIC FAIL! Remember? But hey, I won a prize for worst hatch rate......

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Hey, don't sweat it, my first hatch was 100% EPIC FAIL! Remember? But hey, I won a prize for worst hatch rate......

Something in there has to be developing. I don't want to win Ms Congeniality. I'll leave that for Ron.