Weird Hatching...

[dndjohnson]

So I am new to raising quail. We will be using them for a whole prey diet for our dogs and cats. I ordered 60 eggs on ebay from a "reliable" vendor. Their hatch date was last Thursday and our first one actually hatched on Friday morning. We had 2 more hatch on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. I have float tested the remaining eggs and unfortunately there are only 3 more viable eggs. It is now Monday morning. Every post or article I have seen says that I should discard the eggs once they have reached 3-4 days past their hatch date. Like I said, the remaining are viable. Is it normal to have them hatch so far apart? I know it goes against everything to "help" the remaining out of their shell but I'd hate to lose them. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[LeenaB]

I have a hatch going on right now- from ebay as well. They started hatching Saturday night and one just popped out as I'm typing this. I have 3 more to go. Today is the start of Day 19. I had 19 eggs, 3 cracked when my son was turning them (they were fertile- he lost that as a chore) so 16 incubating. So far it's a good hatch rate for me 13/16 or 81.25% Which is a stellar catch rate for shipped eggs. I may even make if higher if the other 3 hatch. I'm not including the dropped eggs in the rate as it was major human error and not quail genetics at play.

I don't float test eggs. I candled them on day 3 and 7, lock down on day 14, prior to that turning 3 times a day manually. I increase humidity towards the end of the hatch as well. And once the eggs arrived I let them sit for a day to reach room temperature.

My incubator is set at 100.5 and was stable for a couple days before adding eggs (actually I did back to back hatches of chickens and quails- so it's been running for 42 days with a quick cleaning between hatches.

As far as fertile eggs go- these were wonderful. I can't even get that level of fertility out of my chickens that I have. And I've had worse hatch rates with chicken eggs from my own flock- quite a few with failure to develop. So the girls who lay those end up marked for culling.

Did you have temperature issues?

Have you contacted the ebay seller?

Did you let the eggs sit before incubating?

Were the eggs shipped pointy end down?

Did you have detatched air cells?

Did you do an eggtopsy on any of the non-viable eggs?

What incubator are you using? Temps? Humidity?

Lots of things to look at especially since you bought a large quantity of eggs.

Was this your first hatch?

 

[owlett5]

Honestly I'd toss those eggs. From my experience, and from many other people, when eggs are that late the chicks usually have issues which will be a big headache for you later e.g: curled toes, crooked necks, weak chick.

There's quite a bit about shipping ebay eggs that the sellers really don't think about. Do you live in a cold area? The eggs might have gotten far too cold. The post office might have handled them poorly and shook the eggs during shipping too much. How long were they in transit from the seller to your house?

My first experience with an ebayer led to my eggs showing up in my mailbox as egg-icecubes. Literally frozen.

I hardly trust people to send eggs via ebay now. I got my new eggs from JMF and his were packed amazing. Double boxed, doubled foam packed, and with heat packs. Mailed the next day and held at the post office to boot. I had a 90% hatch out of those eggs.

 

[dc3085]

I have had healthy chicks hatch on day 20,21, and 22. I have also had to euthanize a whole lot of late or slow hatching chicks over the years. Don't put yourself in that position unless you have to. To properly euthanize a chick you must completely remove their heads since their spine is not hardened yet.

 

[dndjohnson]

So I decided to perform an eggtopsy. All but one were underdeveloped and really had no chance. The one that was not underdeveloped actually survived! It had spraddled legs for about 16 hours that progressively got better and now is running around with the rest of them. Thanks for all the advice!