juniperj
Hatching
- Mar 4, 2017
- 1
- 0
- 7
This is my second time incubating quail eggs and my first failure. First time round I incubated 36 eggs I purchased and most of them hatched this time last year. Now I have hens from that hatching and I decided to do another round, so I saved up 28 of their eggs over about 5 days and put them in the incubator.
I did everything the same this time except one crucial difference. The first time I used the little plastic thermometer that was in the hovabator kit. Afterwards everyone tells me how inaccurate those are, so I blame the few loses I had on the thermometer and buy a more expensive digital one. I use the digital thermometer the second time and try to keep the eggs at 99.5, give or take a little, for the whole incubation. I turned the eggs the same number of times as before, stopped at day 14 - did everything else the same.
We're at day 23 now. Two chicks pipped, but failed to hatch after a few days, the rest is silent. I float the eggs and none appears to be alive. I opened up a few of the 'dead' eggs to find fully formed but not alive chicks. What could cause this?
The only difference I could see was the thermometer. When I put the two together, the kit thermometer reads 106 when the digital reads 99.5.
Should I have trusted the old thermometer? Would a higher incubation temp cause the sort of result I had? What else could account for chicks forming and then not hatching?
Thanks
I did everything the same this time except one crucial difference. The first time I used the little plastic thermometer that was in the hovabator kit. Afterwards everyone tells me how inaccurate those are, so I blame the few loses I had on the thermometer and buy a more expensive digital one. I use the digital thermometer the second time and try to keep the eggs at 99.5, give or take a little, for the whole incubation. I turned the eggs the same number of times as before, stopped at day 14 - did everything else the same.
We're at day 23 now. Two chicks pipped, but failed to hatch after a few days, the rest is silent. I float the eggs and none appears to be alive. I opened up a few of the 'dead' eggs to find fully formed but not alive chicks. What could cause this?
The only difference I could see was the thermometer. When I put the two together, the kit thermometer reads 106 when the digital reads 99.5.
Should I have trusted the old thermometer? Would a higher incubation temp cause the sort of result I had? What else could account for chicks forming and then not hatching?
Thanks