The joys and frustrations of incubating

[The Kooky Kiwi]

I bought my first incubator this summer.. I set some eggs in from my own chickens and got a 75% hatch.. Success!

I then decided to try with some purchased eggs (I need to get some unrelated blood lines into my flock) and all went well (candles looked ok) until approximately lock down time. I'm not sure what transpired but every single egg died sometime between lockdown and hatch day. FAILURE. I tested my incubator with several thermometers - no issues with temperature, and humidity had been ok. I was attempting to hatch Araucana - Am now "wondering" if there was some genetic reason they didn't hatch? I've since read that tufted + tufted parents gives a % death rate in incubation but surely not all!? Soo.. tested my incubator within an inch of it's life and .. tried again..

This time I once again tried purchased araucana eggs (I transported them myself this time - two hour drive from source to home then 24 hours to settle before setting). I also put in 8 of my sebright eggs. Net result 50% hatch rate for the sebright eggs (not bad considering some were older than a week from laying) and only 3 hatched out of 24 set on the Araucana. Frustration!!! I will admit that I had not candled these eggs at all (I was wondering if the previous set disagreed with being handled and candled so I opted for a minimal disturbance approach this time) so today I pulled all the unhatched ones out to look. Of the 21 eggs candled it seems 18 weren't even fertile to start *CRIES*. So it seems I had 6 fertile Araucana eggs and a 50% hatch rate.

I fully understand that hatching travelled eggs is a bit of a lottery but still.. I did NOT expect this rollercoaster of emotions! It's like having my own babies! LOL.

What are all your experiences and feelings with such things? I feel like I get waaaay too invested

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

I totally understand. When you spend the money and then all that time waiting for them to hatch and then they don't, it can be very disheartening. We can put a lot of hope in those little chicks.

 

[dougieee]

I would personally approach the seller of the araucana eggs, more than 75% infertile is awful and is either poor feed, living conditions or cock/hen ratio or just a plain bad bloodline.
And weird, my araucana boys have matured into what could only be called sex pests and are now treading everything, so much so that i now have 18 suspected Brahma-Cana eggs in the incubator
In my experience 75% hatch rate for shipped fertile eggs can be considered a victory, the araucanas that have just matured were shipped, out of a dozen all were fertile and made it past lockdown, annoyingly 3 drowned after internally pipping.
They were my first and last shipped eggs and only then because there was no one within 200m selling any.

 

[Ted_Harrell]

I know how you feel kiwi, I too have so much hope for the little eggs, got 4 out of 6 in my nurture right and out of the two in the Chinese bator, 0 for two. I have a new farm innovators incubator that I will be trying next on some marans eggs. Crossing my fingers...

 

[The Kooky Kiwi]

Update: In the latest run (of purchased eggs - different supplier and breed this time) I tried the "dry" incubation method. Just a teaspoon of water in the wells once a week then bumped up to 70 percent on lockdown. All babies were hatched within the expected 3 day window. This time I had a 60% success rate on the purchased eggs and 100% success rate on own control eggs in the same set - so we have improvement!


Note: Of the 7 that did not hatch, 2 died in shell late in development (but before lockdown I'd say) and 5 were fertile but failed to develop beyond a week or so. I've already sent a message of thanks to this breeder to let her know the fertility was spot on.