I'm incubating my first batch of eggs and today was day 19. Afriend of mine convinced me that I absolutely had to candle them and I didn't before, so I did it tonight and the eggs are almost completely dark with a big air bubble (or whatever that is) I don't see movement (I don't think) or anything that gives me any hope and I don't hear peeping. I am now going over every temp change in my head and feeling horrible that I might have killed them. I've had a hard time keeping temp consistant and it has bounced between 97 and 101 multiple times. What should an egg look like at day 19? Do they always peep? also, I have the styrofoam incubator with the egg turner and the fan, but now that I'm looking at it it seems really unreasonable for them to hatch in those egg turner things and once they've haatched they won't be able to move around in there I wouldn't think. Is there some way to take them out? should I take them out? I borrowed the incubator from a friend but he didn't tell me anything about it and I don't have instructions and I don't want to break it and I can't get ahold of him! I think my eggs might be dead, but I don't know and that's almost worse. I'm a bad chicken hatcher. I almost want to cry.
I'm no expert but I don't see movement in mine either at day 18 and I'm not hearing chirping. I don't think I've killed them I believe they have just developed to a size its hard to see them move when candling since they take up most the egg. The automatic egg turner should come out of the incubator on day 18 and the humidity raised. At this point you try and leave them alone as much as possible. This is my first incubated eggs but we have raised loads of chicks under broody hens. So like I said this makes me no expert. I'd remove the egg turner and leave em go. Best of luck hope you have a good hatch.
Mine didn't start peeping till yesterday which is day 20. So don't worry yet. I just looked at mine and my incubator which is normally steady dropped to the low 90s high 80s
fluffington, you need to pull out the turner and place the eggs on the wire floor of the incubator. You don't turn eggs the last 3 days (19-21). Don't worry if you can't hear them peeping, I couldn't hear mine until they actually broke the shell on the 21st day. Make sure to increase the humidity in the incubator too. I added wet Cello sponges to the floor of the incubator because the wate reservoir in the bottom of the bator wasn't sufficient to keep the humidity high enough (needs to be 65 % for the last 3 days) hope this helps!
TAKE THE EGGS OUT OF THE TURNER if you haven't already and add water. I'm on my first hatch and the day we took them out of the incubator they were all dark with no movement. The week before we saw movement. Thday we have 22 chicks.
