What is your true Hatch success rate?

[BobDBirdDog]

I think the word is Viable that Governs this topic best.

If your shooting at a target with 50 bullets and 50 blanks (all mixed into one pile), it will always result in hits and misses and your final score will not reflect your true marksmanship; it will always be 50% or less. If you know 50 are blanks and do not cull them, but shoot a perfect 50% bulls eye rather than a 100%, then who's fault is it really that you don't get the gold medal?

I have had my share 2 - 8% of Fertile eggs that showed development but did not hatch or make it beyond day xx. Mixing that with Blanks (non fertile eggs), those I know will never hatch, only distorts the true reality. Hens can lay an egg even if there is no rooster, under that circumstance would you try to hatch those eggs? No, you know they are not fertile. Consider damaged/cracked eggs or eggs from the freezer section at the local store, as long as you place them in the incubator, should they be counted in the final hatch rate?

Then again, I cut 3 out of a black snakes belly, 2 of the 3 hatched. I considered that a 66.6~% hatch rate when I didn't expect any to hatch.

On the last subject, I have only bought about 5 tickets in the many years the lottery has been available in TN, but I did have the chance to apply as one of the programmers for our state lottery software design application. I have a 100% loss.

 

[MeepBeep]

One has to determine what they are measuring...

The term 'hatch rate' is arbitrary... What is it actually a measure of? Chances are that answer varies by person...

IMO hatch rate should be a measure of hatched chicks from viable (fertile) eggs that were in viable non-damaged condition that were put into incubation...

Using the above 'clears' would not be counted as they are a result of infertility and no matter what they won't hatch, the hatch rate is zero,

Same with damaged eggs, if the egg was damaged and no longer viable, like infertile eggs it would have a hatch rate of zero...

For those that argue, that whatever should be included it's only because they choose to draw their line in the sand somewhere else and include other variables... But, why is your line in the sand the correct one?

The absolute hatch rate can only be factored one way, count every egg the hen lays over it's lifetime and count every chick hatched from those eggs, but most would agree that number is basically useless in determining anything...

A riddle...

A hen lays 988 eggs in her lifetime, some were fertilized others were not... Out of those 988 eggs 233 were collected for incubation, but the farmers being clumsy dropped 27 of them and they splattered on the floor before they made it into the incubator... He also cracked open 17 of them during incubation due to clumsiness... He had also forgot about 25 of them and left them sitting out in the barn for 3 months before putting them in the incubator... During candling he found 19 clears and discarded those... Also in one of his incubators holding 24 eggs the temp spiked to 110° for two days... All told he hatched 111 chicks out of those 988 eggs in the hens life...

What is the hatch rate from that hen?

A. 11%
B. 48%
C. 54%
D. 59%
E. 68%
F. 77%
G. 79%
H. 92%
I. Some other value

The answer is all of the above depending upon what you decide is the arbitrary starting point of your initial number of eggs...

The problem with the above is that depending upon your starting point it might not narrow down where any potential issues are, and for many narrowing down the cause of the non-hatchings is what we are concerned about...

If you take the total eggs laid and the total chicks hatched and get what is the absolute true hatch rate for that hen, you have no idea what caused that low 11% true hatch rate for that hen pointing towards it being bad breeding stock... On the other hand if you remove clumsiness, mistakes, human error and the eggs never given a viable chance to develop, you find that the hen isn't the horrible breeding stock with a much higher percentage of hatchings...

You have to decide what you are measuring and what factors you want to include in the number... It's not a simple black and white answer...

You can't arbitrarily toss out any non collected and non incubated eggs from said hen over her life time and not count those in your hatch rate while complaining that someone else doesn't count clears in theirs, that is hypocritical...

 

[BobDBirdDog]

Looking back to the beginning I see how poorly I wrote this question out, and in my defense I submit that perhaps it was the Seagram 7 or late night brain fart(s). On the other hand maybe it was a psychopathic episodes where I sit at the PC with a 45 auto cocked in my lap listening for the faintest of abnormal sounds or eggs piping before loosing it. God help us all if it is a combination of all the above!
Still, to bring back the points I was getting at.

• Just for controversy of topic and thought, and maybe to create a Standard method (who knows)
  • Mutual Agreement of Method Among BYC fans....then onward to conquer the world with a new world order "BYC style"!
• When I brag my Hatch success rate, it is of the number of eggs left AFTER I have candled and culled for the first time...and then some and I began to wonder if others brag HSR based on others methods?
• Hatch success rate "for me" refers to all VIABLE hatch-able eggs; It does not refer to all the eggs I cram in the incubator in the beginning!!!

The rest is just food (or BS) for thought!

All of you are doing a great job of elaborating on these points. I hope it continues. Thanks

 

[tobit]

I just hatched 5 chicks out of a clutch of 6 eggs!

 

[btguy]

I don't think hatch rate of shipped eggs means much. I have hatched shipped eggs 4 times and gotten 15/16, 0/16, 0/16, 8/12 in that order. Too much depends on variables beyond your control. The percentage that hatch against those that make Otto lockdown might be ok if the eggs are light enough to candle. My Marans and oe eggs are either light passes through or no light gets through. I can't tell more than that