*WARNING* GRAPHIC Embryo Quitter PICS (educational) *New pics 1st post

[Laskaland]

Quote:
This was great! I have never had the guts to open them- no pun intended. I am interested to know why mine don't always hatch, what I could have possibly done better or fixed with the temp or the humidity.

Thanks so much for sharing your pictures!
Christina

 

[LilRalphieRoosmama]

Great pics!! I opened some from my very first hatch and cried because they looked so perfect but didn't hatch. I haven't had the guts to do it since then; just breaks my heart when they come that far and don't make it.

 

[Akane]

I suppose that's OK to feed them to a dog?

I wouldn't for much the same reason I wouldn't go get road kill or some random dead animal and feed it to my dog. It's been dead for awhile and bacteria may be taking over. Along with the fact that you don't know why they died. Maybe if I knew an egg died in the past 24hrs for a specific reason I would but not quitters that have been sitting in the incubator dead for several days. I did give my dog some duds that I went ahead and removed from the incubator after only a few days. I knew these probably weren't fertile and they were free along with easy to see through shells so I didn't wait the full week to make sure. I just cracked them when no veins were showing after a couple days and they weren't even fertile and no sign of being rotten.


I break open every egg. Even clears.​

 

[urbanhatch]

Informative, I love Chickens, but I also eat them.

 

[ksacres]

I suppose that's OK to feed them to a dog?

I feed all mine to my dogs, along with infertiles and any actual chicks that don't make it. It is protein, seems a sin to waste it, though *I* certainly wouldn't eat them.​

 

[walkswithdog]

This OUGHT TO BE up in the stickies - a little necropsy file for reference. I crack all my no-goes to see what happened if I can tell and when. I'm glad they don't stink. I need to remember to take pics. A photo-log of what can go wrong is useful for everyone.

Thank you all for posting. As long as the warning is on it to protect the faint of heart all should be good.

 

[MichiganWoods]

I did add a page to my BYC page with these pictures. Any time I do an educational photo series, I will just make a new BYC page with the images.

 

[NatashaT]

Is anyone here? I am slightly freaking out. I feel horrible. We have our first batch of Muscovy ducks by a mama who had a fine batch last year (at another farm). She laid on 17 eggs this year. One-by-one they were rotting. She would pull them out of the nest and take them down to the creek. On Day 34, expecting the rest to hatch the next day, I was outside working near her nest, and there was an egg-splosion. It was disgusting, stinky, and filled her nest and went all over the other eggs.

In a panic, I came to search the web for what to do. Most of the advice was leaning toward taking out the remaining eggs, cleaning them off, and creating a new nest. The kids and I did so very carefully and gently and placed the new nest within a close proximity of her old nest. We waited with baited breath until finally a few hours later she climbed on - for all of 5 minutes! She jumped up like she had been bittten in the behind and came out to bed down somewhere else. We decided to bring the eggs in under a heat lamp, since that's all we had.

I kept checking on them, and as the temperature was fluctuating too much I decided to make a new nest in the dog's unused kennel and shut her in with them. We did that for several hours, but she refused to sit on them, rolled them out of the nest I had made and sat beside them. We finally let her out in the evening for water, etc. I was getting too upset trying to keep them perfect, so I just left them overnight anyway, hoping she would go back.

She didn't, and this morning they were very cool. We were bracing ourselves to throw them out, but when we picked them up to examine them we felt little shudders in five of the six remaining eggs. Brought them inside again to bring their heat back up to about 100 degrees. Then, I insulated them in ankle socks and am carrying them around in a pouch near my torso. We candled them just a bit ago, and there is a huge air space in five of the six.

The sixth one looked watery, so we thought, Oh great, another rotten one! We took it outside, but to be safe [to make sure it wasn't about to hatch], we peeled back a tiny portion of the shell. It didn't smell rotten (Oh no!). We peeled back enough that we could see what was going on, and inside is a perfect egg sack (like a placenta), perfect blood vessels, a perfect baby Muscovy with little legs and toenails, and a huge yolk. I feel horrible. What if it could have survived?

I placed it all back in its shell very carefully and put it in a ziplock with a little air hole, and now it's under a makeshift incubator that my neighbor told me how to make. Is it possible for it to survive? I can't find good embryo identification pictures online to tell exactly how old it is. The only things I don't get is, if she started laying on her eggs and pulled out her feathers 36 days ago today, but laid eggs for two more days after that, the youngest chick would be 34 days old today. How could it possibly have that much yolk left at day 34?!

I don't see the pictures anymore from the original poster, but that's what I was hoping to see if anyone could send them to me. I may be able to better identify how old it is, and if it's already dead. Should I see a heartbeat or movement if it's alive?

 

[NatashaT]

Update: Well, I never did get a reply from the forum :-( I am sad to report that all the ducklings died in shell. On Day 37 I gently shelled the rest, and there was no movement. They all had large yolks remaining. They all were well-formed. Two of them had a white "mold" (?) beginning to form on the placenta. It took me a while, but I just had to get over it. Hopefully, she will lay another batch this year and try again. I think she has chosen our front flower garden as her new nest. I am glad it is so close, so we can keep an eye on her. We haven't seen any raccoons up close yet . . . I am really enjoying all the information on this forum.