What happened?

[BuffDuck]

I am new to hatching but I am trying to hatch buff ducks. Last week I lost one during its zipping stage and then a chick died in the shell before it even pipped on the same day the zipped one died. Today our 3rd egg was moving, etc. and now there is no movement but there is a ring around the egg where it should have zipped but it didn't zip or pip - did it die? What am I doing wrong? The temp. is 99.5. (its due date is today). This is so frustrating. Any advise is appreciated.

 

[Sustained]

I am new to hatching but I am trying to hatch buff ducks. Last week I lost one during its zipping stage and then a chick died in the shell before it even pipped on the same day the zipped one died. Today our 3rd egg was moving, etc. and now there is no movement but there is a ring around the egg where it should have zipped but it didn't zip or pip - did it die? What am I doing wrong? The temp. is 99.5. (its due date is today). This is so frustrating. Any advise is appreciated.

Do you have a picture of the ring around the egg? What's your humidity level? During incubation and during lockdown. Did you candle and check air cells? Are you keeping the lid closed during the entire lockdown? If you could elaborate on your incubation methods it would help a lot. I'm sorry you're having a rough time with hatching.

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

Hi
Sorry to hear your trouble with your hatching. X2 with Sustained more info would be a great help. If you had one that zipped last week and another due now have you done a staggered hatch? And not set all eggs at the same time so they would all hatch at the same time? Staggered hatches can be difficult without a seperate hatcher/incubator as they require different levels of humidity during incubation and lockdown.

 

[BuffDuck]

I can get a picture. It almost looks like a pencil line around the egg. the humidity for this egg is 75-80, I raised it because the first two were at 65-70%, I'm assuming they died based on what I've been researching the membrane dried out before the baby was able to get out. Not sure why the other one would have died, it was moving then it just stopped. I didn't want to crack it open to look. I candled the 3rd egg before lock down and it did look like It wasn't as developed as the other 2. But then, I'm not sure what I'm totally looking for. I have kept it closed in lockdown except for when I had to removed the two babies that died. This has been a great learning experience for me and my kids, wish I knew more but we weren't expecting to try to hatch eggs without researching more - kind of learning as we go.

 

[BuffDuck]

I agree. We were trying to hatch the eggs(8 total) because our male died and my girls wanted to see if her eggs were fertile and they would have his and her babies. ( not realizing all that goes into hatching) Of the 8, only 3 made it to lockdown.This 3rd egg was the last egg she laid that I took to incubate. Its a bummer we didn't get any of his offspring. We might try again in the spring with her new mate, once we know more of what we are doing. I'm just thankful I found this site as it has helped us understand a lot.

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/egg-failure-to-hatch-diagnosing-incubation-problems
This is a good article on hatch failures and problems. Hope you find it usefull it's very informative.
Hope you have better luck with your future incubation.

 

[BuffDuck]

Thank you for the link. Tho I'll probably not know exactly what happened that link answers a lot!

 

[Sustained]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/hatching-eggs-101

That's a great link for information on hatching. Sally Sunshine did a great job with it. I hope you have better luck next time Yorkshire's link is also extremely useful to help improve hatch rates. It'll give you a good idea of what you're doing wrong. Just look for the specific problem you had and it'll tell you the most likely reason/reasons so that you can correct them. Incubating and hatching is so much fun but there's a lot of pitfalls to avoid