What are we doing wrong? Second failed silkie hatch

[jillybeans]

Hi! Normally I lurk, as it seems almost every question has already been asked. But I'm totally stumped! We have let our silkies sit on eggs twice now, and both times have been complete failures. The first time she sat on 8 eggs, and none hatched...didn't even see any growth. The second time the other hen (we have two hens and a roo) sat on them, and it's been about 23 days so we candled them tonight (another 9 eggs) and nada again! Not a single one is growing something.

We have checked the eggs before they sit and are fairly confident they are getting fertilized. The nest is clean, dry, ventilated, but not too dry, etc etc. I have no idea what is going wrong!

We have an incubator but I've always read that you have a better success rate with broody hens, so we didn't use it. Gah!

Thoughts?

 

[gamebirdsonly]

It does sound like Roo isn't fertile or he just isn't completing job.

 

[jillybeans]

Even if we see a clear fertile spot on the egg? I just cracked open two we had in the fridge and both look fertile, so I'm not sure if I am missing something or not. Can they have the bullseye even if he's not doing the job all the way?

 

[Jeni11]

If your silkie hen is a bantam, she may not be large enough to adequately incubate that many eggs.

 

[jillybeans]

Should we break out the incubator and try with that instead?

 

[Jeni11]

I would try that. I tried letting my broody silkie hen sit on about 10 eggs (all fertile) about 2 months ago, and only one developed but never hatched. I'm on day 23 of incubating my silkie's egg with a hovabator (this is my first time using an incubator) and throughout candling all have fully developed. So far 2 of the 8 eggs have hatched Good luck.

 

[azahn]

I know this is a late reply, but wanted to share my experience. I just cracked open 1 egg out of 12 that still had not hatched under a bantam. Four of her babies hatched 3 days ago, so I thought I would give the rest of the nest an extra day or so, but she was scratching and making a mess of it. This happened earlier in the spring with same Momma, so I was concerned because it was as if she started paying all attention to the ones that hatched and ignored the remainder of the eggs that she had been very dedicated to.

I'm glad I went ahead and cracked open one of the eggs. I have been checking them for 2 days, picking each one up very carefully, looking for signs of pipping and listening for any sound inside - nothing. When I cracked it, yolk went all over the place. Okay, so on to egg 2. Same thing with a bit of undistinguishable mass. Egg 3, yolk was almost scrambled and sticking to outer edges, runny inside. 4th egg exploded when I set it down. 5th egg had dead chick inside, that appeared full term and just didn't make it out in time (slightly dry). Others were the scrambled yolk type. As hesitant as I was to check inside them, I felt I needed to. I'm no expert, but I think the eggs got overheated. If you have a broody and a partial hatch, but don't know what to do with the unhatched eggs, inspect them carefully, listen, and after a couple of days, muster up the courage to check one. Yes, you may sacrifice one living chick to see if the others are just late. But if the egg was not good, then go on to the next one. Maybe momma knew what I didn't... they weren't viable, and at least none exploded in the nest all over our healthy babies.