What am I doing wrong!!!!???

[kellim]

Okay, I have hatched my very first chick last week. It did very well and it was the only egg I had that was hatching. Well this week I had another egg, I am doing these one at a time because it is just easier for us right now, and I had been candling and today was supposed to be day 22, I noticed I hadn't heard any peeping and so I decided that I wanted to be nosey and looked in and candled the egg and there was no movement. I am using a Hovabator Genesis 1588 and my humidity has been between 43 and 60 percent. Well when i opened the egg I saw a light brown place on the membrane, and then on over I saw a hole in the membrane that had black around it. The baby was dead in the egg. It was perfectly formed though there was blood from it's umbilical area and some sticky liquid that got on my hands while I was "operating" from inside the egg. I also noticed the membrane was very dry, though I cannot figure out why since my humidity has been very consistant. Any ideas? I am making sure water is constantly in the bator and my temps stay right at 100. If they do anything they either hit 99.9 or 101.0 and then straight back to 100. I can't understand why the first egg hatched so well and quickly, I mean I haven't changed anything about the incubator. I cleaned it very well afterward. I had another one dead in shell on Saturday that I posted about as well, same thing with it.

 

[ButtonQuailBoy]

Bad luck...You didn't do anything wrong...And stop blaming yourself!

 

[tiki244]

They dont ALL hatch,,,,,,remember from day 18 keep the humidity up to 60-65 and get enough airflow in the incubator too(more than the first 18 days) I have had plenty of fully formed chicks die right towards the end,,,I am sure once I get more experienced it will be easier ( and the same with you)

 

[Akane]

Isn't that humidity a little low for hatching? Not that I've even hatched one chick yet but 43-60 are the numbers I hear for incubating but the last few days you are suppose to increase it. Most sites said 65-70%. Also hydrometers can be wrong. I was told to test mine and it came out reading 5% low so even though it says 70% now (just raised it today) there's a 5% correction to put it at 65%. If the hydrometer is off then it may not even be 60% in the incubator.

If you scroll down this site http://www.poultryhelp.com/hatch.html there is a pic of the size of the air cell at different stages. Too small can be too high of humidity and too large can be too low of humidity.

 

[kellim]

Sorry! I should have added that I did increase the humidity and it ranged from 63-70 percent. I completely forgot about mentioning that! The other humidity I had posted was what it ranged during the first 17 days.

 

[Eggseronious]

So the first 18 days the humidity ranged from 43 to 60% this is a large range. What did it average? Remember you have to increase the size of air cell, and this cant be done @60% humidity.

 

[kellim]

It typically stayed around 53%. It only dropped once for a few minutes, I realized it and added water, then we had an egg that had to be taken from a hen that hatched, we had to base our calculations on candling and were only 2 days off, and that was at 60%. It was a very fast hatch and then the humidity dropped back down to the 53%. We had to take that egg that did hatch because a opossum got into our broody hens nest and got all but 3. Those were the 3 that we have had in the incubator. 2 had already hatched, but the 3 total eggs were from 3 different hens. When the broody would get up to eat, our other two would go lay in her nest. When the opossum ended up eating all her eggs but one, the others apparantly felt the need to lay more in the nest so when we noticed that the oppossun had got into the eggs again and killed one of the babies that was ready to hatch and we found the bloody egg on the ground we took the other 3 eggs before they got too cold. One was the chick that lived, it hatched out last Tuesday and is one week old now and doing very well, the other 2 eggs were the ones that died in the egg. I wonder if perhaps there was some invisible damage to the egg that made those 2 have difficulty holding humidity? I have 2 humidity monitiors and they are right on with each other.

 

[Eggseronious]

I try to keep an average of around 42% the first 18 days and never over 45%.

 

[tiki244]

Quote:
Do you use the dry hatch method?

 

[kellim]

What is the dry hatch method?