Turning vs not turning, an unintended experiment

[dand883]

The past few months i have been hatching some eggs for a friend of mine who has a hobby farm and doesn't have enough incubator space to keep up. I have the normal chicken rails, not the quail rails, so no matter what i only have 42 spots on my turner and usually end up doing a mix of chicken and quail eggs at the same time by adding the chicken eggs in 3 days ahead of time. I have ordered a set of quail rails, but they have been delayed in shipping, so they're not an option for this hatch.

So last week after the last batch have hatched out i set the incubator back up again and let him know i was ready for his next batch of eggs whenever he was nearby next. When he showed up he had around 100 quail eggs that he said he had planned to deliver to someone on the same trip, but they didn't show up, so rather than they go to waste, we could throw them in the incubator instead of the chicken eggs he was planning to add in.

We filled the turner with the first 42 and there is a1-2" gap at the back end where the turner motor prevents there being another tray we set in as many as we possibly could without them falling over or touching the turning trays and were hoping that the quail rails showed up within a day or two and we could get the rest turning pretty soon.

It's now been about a week and a half and no quail rails, so they haven't been turned this whole time. I have heard some people say they have had decent hatch rates without turning before, so when we get to lockdown i'm going to candle them all and see how things stack up for numbers of turned vs not turned for development and then update again at hatching.

 

[JustAChickenLoverOverHere]

Interesting.
There is one thing about your "unintended experiment".
The embryos will stick to the eggs if you don't turn them.

 

[dand883]

We went into lockdown tonight and candled as they went in.

For the eggs on the turner of the 42 that went in there were 31 that candled dark, looked good, 3 or 4 that look like they started but stopped part way for some reason and the rest clear, unfertilized/never started.

For the pile at the back there were 33 in the pile, of those 11 candled dark, 5 or 6 were clear/unfertilized and the rest had started and quit part way.

So the results are about what i expected. To be fair to the pile eggs we did put the newest eggs in the turner and the oldest into the pile just so we gave the best chance to the highest percentage eggs, but that's not to say the results would have been any different.

Will add another count when they hatch.

 

[Hycclady]

I literally just had a batch of eggs that I didn’t turn at all unless candling. I got 7/8.

 

[dand883]

A little late updating, but of the 11 non turners we had 5 hatch and of those 5 2 didn't make it longer than a day. They were much later than the rest in the turners though. The bulk of the eggs hatched day 18-19 and these last 5 were day 21/22. I assume that where they were a bit lower down in the incubator than the ones up in the turner rails they must have been slightly colder.
All in all a 3/33 success rate doesn't inspire confidence and won't be something i intentionally do again.

On the plus side, the quail rails finally arrived, so my available egg spots in the incubator just went from 42 to 120.