The suspense is killing me

[MontanaChickDoc]

Well I thought this would be my last post. One more “olive egger” hatched out today and went to the brooder with her buddies at bedtime. This left 4 eggs unhatched in the incubator. I tapped and listened, float tested - nada. I even gave them a little shake to judge for liquidness of inner contents. When I got back from outside chores, I grabbed the candler for one last peek. The first three as expected had fully formed chicks (I could see a foot here, wing feathers there) but no movement. The forth was clearly BREATHING within an internal pip!! 3 days late but maybe she’ll hatch ok. She must wonder why it’s so quiet all of a sudden.
Of the bunch all seem great. I do have one chick with a stiff hock that I have splinted and will do PT in the hopes I can get that leg working properly. I will try and remember b vitamins tomorrow. I hope I can get her right because she’s one of my Isbars - only 3 hatched of 12 purchased off Ebay. I have a feeling their nutrition was not the best-the shells were thin and the nonstarters I opened had pale yolks.

 

[MontanaChickDoc]

Good luck! I wish I had as much success with my bees as my chicks. chicks do seem to be able to stand a certain amount of incompetence and bad luck on our parts...

Very cool. I'm incubating for the first time and "lockdown" on Monday after work. My first set I put in 8 eggs. Five remain, two stopped along the way and one wasn't fertile. I had gobs of issues. I'm a beekeeper and I rear queen bees so I have an incubator for my queen cells. That incubator just flat-out died (after serving faithfully for about three years). I turn them for the last time of the day at midnight. Went to do that 4-5 days into incubation and find the temps in my incubator down to 86 or so. So I went scrambling. Thankfully I had some digital temperature controllers that I use for liquefying honey so I set up a lightbulb and they set in our MICROWAVE for about 24 hours before I could get something else set up. Then I dropped one of those forehead scanning thermometers and it hit one of the eggs. So I melted beeswax over the cracks (nothing leaked). That one was still moving as of yesterday (after recracking slightly and then rewaxing a couple days ago).

But I got another dozen eggs from my friend who'd given me the first eight and after 6 days all 12 were developing.

If any of these first eight have survived my ignorance and misfortune it will be lucky indeed.
Awesome to see your success!

ck,,

 

[MontanaChickDoc]

Well the last chick didn't make it. I opened the air sac end of the egg to check on her, Sunday morning. She was breathing but not peeping or really doing anything that looked like a chick wanting to hatch. It was like she was stuck in limbo, neither hatching or dying. I set up the little 12 egg incubator so I could move her to a clean spot and clean out the other incubator (I didn't realize how GROSS they got with hatching! Stinky, too.) I checked a couple hours later and she was dead. I am not surprised...3 days overdue and no sign of progression. The yolk sac was not completely absorbed. The other 3 duds I opened, too - they were wet inside, looks like they died right around hatch time. Good sized air cells but gooey inside.
One of my favorites is my Naked Neck Marans (Turkarans?). Naked neck, feathered shanks The "olive eggers" puffy cheeks are adorable