I have been having low hatch rate on my Cream LegbarsI have nine laying Hens, I'm getting plenty of babies, but not as many a I should... Lots of late quiters...how's everyone else doing?
Any suggestion? My Hens have been laying for two to three months. Maybe they are still alittle to young..I'm not having issues with any of the other eggs in the incubator...
I think there are lot of things that cause late quitters.
People are always quick to blame the incubator and go buy a more expensive one, but in my hatching I think that the health of the parent stock and handling of the eggs are the biggest factors in whether I have a good hatch rate or not.
I recently found some interesting information:
1) Overly larger eggs tend to have lower hatch rates. The theory on that is that the yolk size tends to not increase so you have a higher white to yolk ratio. I did find that my 50 gram egg CLB hen had about a 10% higher hatch rate than my 60 gram egg hen (that was before I even found this information too),
2) The same source also said better layers tend to have a higher hatch rate too. I can't remember the reasons for that. My 50 gram hen was a better layer, but not by much they both would go about 3 weeks between missing days. The 60 gm egg hen went brood twice though.
I don't think that the age of your hens has anything to do with this. The really small pullet eggs only last for about the first week or two so if your ladies have been laying for 2-3 months that wouldn't be the problem.
I am not very good at nutrition or diets for chickens. I have tried different diets a few times to see how it effected the quality of their plumage, production, and egg hatchability. I don't know if anything I have tried has been a move in the right or wrong direction though. If you find good information on booster nutrition for hatchability you might try changing that to see if more of those that are dying between day 15-19 can make it too the end.
Misaligned air sack in the egg can be from heredity. That is one cause of losses the last days. They say that not helping chicks out of the shell is one way to naturally select for more hatchable eggs becuase gives a dissadvantage to those producing off center air sacks.
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Most have absorbed yolk but never internal pip. I have no idea what's going on. I have a big batch of eggs from our other hens going into lockdown next week, if they all hatch out fine I'm guessing their diet is OK. Sad thing is we have people WAITING for Ameraucana chicks and to lose so many at the end is frustrating! Her eggs are rather large, and the few chicks I am getting are quite small especially for the size of eggs. Puzzling to me. Now she has stopped laying. The other Ameraucana stopped laying too right before she dropped dead off the roost one night. I sure hope we don't lose this one... hoping it is moulting or SOMETHING else.
