Total Failure

[speedy2020]

Quote:
How many eggs develop?

 

[lightfoot]

thirty years or more ago, we incubated eggs with excellent results. used the little giant, hatched pheasant ,quail, duck. no problem.
last spring we decided to have a few chickens. we were too late in the season to get chicks from the feed stores. weeks later I found a note on grocery store wall, chicks for sale. we bought a few but still had the urge to hatch our own. we bought our incubator from tsc.
the folks who sold me the chicks sold me some eating eggs. told me they had been in the fridge for a week. when i got them home i tossed the doz in the fridge. 3 or 4 days later i realized we had 4 doz eggs, that's too many. I don't know what came over me, I set up the bator and tossed the ladies refrigerator eggs into it. temps were erratic because of the weather. we had several thermometers, not one agreed with any other. never was sure of the humidity. never used a light to check fertility. guess what, 100% hatch, nice chicks. went back and got 18 hatching eggs. 100% hatch. now we were feeling the hatching power!!!! started buying mailed eggs--same lousy hatches as others on this post have written about. hundreds of dollars down the drain. but now we have a colony of the cutest silkies. some just started laying, and i got the crazy urge to hatch. i didn't think any would hatch due to the -0 temps, from new mothers, not even an egg box for the hen.
I could not control the humidity, 50% to 10% to 27% all the time, I just knew that these would be shrink wrapped. I was so discouraged I didn't lay them down on day 18, they were left rocking in the turner. 3 eggs hatched, not shrink wrapped, perfect chicks. i cracked the eggs not hatched, non were fertile. so that tells me, local eggs hatch, usps shipped eggs suck.
bob

 

[lightfoot]

Quote:
X2

 

[Missy3b]

Thanks for all the great advice. I have a Little Giant Incubator. I borrowed one from a friend before we bought our own and got 100% hatch. Out of curiosity, I cracked open all 19 eggs and not a single one showed any development. I did not candle them. Yes, it was naive but I really thought that whatever I got would be great. Not so much.

I have put 3 of my girls' eggs in the bator to see what happens. If they successfully hatch, I will know it was not me.

The sad part is, my boys still want these breeds. And being for 4-H, they need to hatch over the winter to be old enough to show.

Would it make a difference if I had them shipped UPS or FedEx?

 

[debilorrah]

Quote:
Ok Missy, I am gonna go ahead and say it. The LG is bottom of the bators. I see soo many people that have issues with them, way more that have problems than those that don't. I was very glad that I did some research before buying my bator as I was looking at getting that one.

 

[Missy3b]

It is my 10 year old's as a birthday gift so we weren't gonna go out and buy an expensive one. I know its the bottom of the line but because I had used one before and had great success, I decided to give it a try. I guess I could ask around to see if I could borrow a better one from someone.

 

[Mahonri]

First time I ordered eggs I put them under a broody and got ZERO.

One egg pipped and then died.

All the other eggs were quitters.

 

[debilorrah]

Quote:
You could do that or go to ebay and search for brinsea, hovabator, r-com, GQF. Those are the better bators to have. Someone here on BYC sold a Brinsea that normally costs $400 for $55. You never know what you will find.

 

[HorseFeatherz NV]

I have a LG with fan - I love it - course I am a tad "different"

. Granted I have never hatched in anything else but a broody, but I am very pleased with what I hatch.


One thing that work really well for me: I have it in an interior closet (no outside walls) which really seems to keep the air temp around the bator "even" with little fluctuation. The only time I have to adjust the temp is when I remove the turner at lockdown (and of course reset when turner is put back in) - but the adjust is very tiny.

I did battle humidity on lockdown until I figured that out also - due to my dry area, I fill the bator every other day - on lockdown, I put a sourcream pint sized container filled with water and a washcloth into the bator near the fan. I pull a corner of the washcloth out of the container to help the water evaporate.

 

[Missy3b]

Thanks to a fellow BYCer, my son and I are going to look at chicks tomorrow. Someone let me know about a craigslist ad with one of the breeds that didn't hatch. If we can bypass the egg hatching and get straight to the babies, oh what a lovely Christmas gift it will be.