Unexpected hatching - help!

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Theblackpukeko

Songster
Oct 9, 2019
84
356
101
Banks Peninsula, New Zealand
Hi, I'm a first time hatcher and just started incubating some chicken eggs. They are at two weeks now, all healthy and growing well, but with them we put one pukeko egg that we found, hoping it would hatch. It's a wild bird here in New Zealand.
Now, we didn't expect the pukeko to hatch before next week, but when I was candling, I did think it was pretty big already. I compared to different other birds and thought it would hatch next week. Now, today I found an external pip. I realized then that yesterday while candling I had seen an internal pip without knowing.
Because I didn't know it would hatch, the humidity was quite low though for the past days and not raised for hatching. Also, the egg was constantly in an auto-turning incubator. It decided to hatch anyway. It made a very small air hole but the membrane had dried up in that spot completely, so I just opened a very tiny breathing hole. It's chirping a lot now. Still, I'm super worried about the membrane drying up and it dying. I put it on a damp paper towel and did everything I know of to make it easier for the chick, but I am still worried.
When do I need to assist?
And does the chick have a chance of surviving even though I didn't make any preparations for the hatch during the last days?
 
What a lovely bird! It is a wetland bird so I would be worried about humidity too. Not finding much on hatching them,most sites recommend taking them to a wildlife rescue center. Maybe you could call one for advise? Chickens take a while from external pip to zip and hatch but I don't know if this little one will be the same.
 
What a lovely bird! It is a wetland bird so I would be worried about humidity too. Not finding much on hatching them,most sites recommend taking them to a wildlife rescue center. Maybe you could call one for advise? Chickens take a while from external pip to zip and hatch but I don't know if this little one will be the same.
Yeah, the thing is that I couldn't find a lot of information about hatching them, but I found some on a close relative and it was very similar to chickens. It's just that I really have no idea about when to help the chick. I keep on reading "12 - 24 hours and no progress" but is that even if it made an internal pip the day before yesterday? When I found the egg I just knew that the pip hadn't been there the day before. Because at the moment I'm only home in the evening and I have someone checking temperature and humidity, but they didn't check for pips. So it really could've been anywhere from the evening till the next evening and I don't want to lose it because I didn't intervene.
 
:welcome
Probably the egg you found was under the mother for a week or two before you found it.
Yes, that's what I figured as well. It's just that I hadn't seen any pukeko sitting there the weeks before so I thought it couldn't be that much older, also because they take longer to hatch than chickens, I estimated the time for next week. But well, it decided to surprise me!
 

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