What causes a chick to get shrink rapped inside of an egg?

[Chris Herzog]

Ok, since my second to last post. One of the three hatched, one zipped and looks like it’s going to be any minute now and the third chick finally pipped it’s shell.

 

[DMRippy]

Go BABIES!!!!!

 

[cmom]

Congratulations on your hatches.

I incubate at around 35% and raise the humidity to around 75% when I go into lockdown. I incubate in a cabinet incubator but hatch in my LG and Hova-Bator styrofoams. I do take the chicks and their shells out as quick as possible as they hatch. I know many people frown on this but it works for me and I have had very few shrink wrap and I have hatched a lot of chicks. I have 2 hatches this next week on Tuesday and Thursday. I usually have a hatch pretty much weekly but I am shutting down after these hatches until after the first of the new year. One thing that helps is when you open the incubator is to mist the eggs lightly. This works for me and my hatches are now around 90% to 100%. You will have to try different things and see what works best for you.

 

[Chris Herzog]

Quote:
Thanks for the tip.

Well since the last egg/chick peeped, nothing more has happened. I have not opened the incubator since he/she peeped and I can see movement inside the egg so hopefully it will be today at some point. I also found a dead chick in my brooder this morning witch was a little disappointing. All of the other chicks that hatched look great. To be honest, they all looked great last night when I went to bed so I was kind of surprised to find one dead this morning.

I also have 42 eggs in another (Hovabator 1588) incubator that are on day 10 today. Hopefully I won't be nearly as worried about these guys as I was with my first ones hatching now. So tell me, how do you all calculate your hatch rate? Is it by the number of eggs you started with in the beginning of that hatch? Or, is it the number of eggs that make it to lock down and then hatch? In-between chicks drying out and chicks peeping, I candled the remaining eggs in the incubator looking for movement inside. I had 15 eggs out of 38 that should have never made it into the bator for lock down. I was kind of in a hurry for lock down because I had an egg peeping on day 18 and I still had to set the bator up for lock down, so I did not do a final candle before lock down. I basically tossed the 38 eggs in the bator with a bunch of water to get the humidity up and crossed my fingers. So out of 23 eggs that should have hatched, meaning eggs with movement in them by lock down, 22 hatched and I’m waiting on #23 now. Out of the 22 that hatched, one died last night and I had to put one down yesterday because something was wrong with its legs (like at least one leg was dislocated at the hip or something) and it could not walk, so I thought it best to do that as soon as possible. I originally started this hatch off with 50 eggs from 4 different people on here and that’s counting the extra eggs that were shipped to me. So out of the 50 shipped eggs, 22 have hatched. Is this the norm for shipped eggs? And is it 22 out of 50, 22 out of 38 or 22 out of 23? Thanks, Chris

 

[BetsyB0101]

Hi Chris. I had the very same problem as you last night with my hatch! I also had not opened the Bator but had shrink wrapped babies. Mine were stuck in the shell with the membrane dried out and my chicks were good and wet too. I almost wonder if it is the egg shell being too tough as someone posted a few minutes ago. Luckily I didnt have any other eggs with pips when I opened my Bator. I wish I knew what to do to keep this from happening again. It is awful!

 

[jmc]

Unfortunately, it is difficult for any one of us to tell you exactly what happened/happens re. shrink wrapping. Some open bator often during lockdown and have great hatches w/o misting. I violated lockdown at least twice a few weeks back and had a hudred percent hatch.
Some get shrink wrapped no matter what.

Having hi humidity at lockdown shouldn't be a cause of drowning--but as al said, maybe it could be at times.
the cause of drowning is the chick pipping into a 'watery area' and drowning; and this is because the humidity was too low for the FIRST EIGHTEEN DAYS. That is the crucial time re. humidity.

but again, you will get many different answers etc. as to just about why anything happens.

Unless we all get super duper bators, we just have to live with the risk element in this hatching business.

good luck to us all.