What's the longest power outage and still get a hatch?

[hinkjc]

As soon as I logged off of here last night, my power started blinking and Wham shut off. I have a sportsman full of eggs and the power was off all night. I need to know if anyone has had power off for over 6 hours and still had success or should I just start over? I could really cry right now because I just did my candling and know it is full of little babies in there.

The majority of the eggs are on day 10, the rest were just set on Monday this week.

Jody

 

[sara]

Oh no Jody! I'm so sorry that happened. The power went out here too.

I have no idea what to say about your babies. That's a long time to be without power.

 

[jimnjay]

Boy that is a long time. I had a power outage on Saturday that was 1 1/2 hours. I was on day 14, I gave the eggs to a broody but I don't know how they are doing. I don't want to mess with her.

If you have eggs to replace the ones in the incubator then that may be the best route, if not you could wait a few days and see how it goes. I would be worried about all those developmental things you read about in the troubleshooting sheets.

 

[hinkjc]

Yeah, jaynie I hear ya on the low temp causing development problems. I'm concerned about that too, but I don't think I can give up on them yet. There was just so many little developing peeps in there, I dread the worst.

I think I'll wait till day 14 candling and make the decision then. That will give me a couple days to gather eggs again.

sara - I had 2 brooders of baby chicks too. I quickly put them in a brooder together for body heat and dh had the fireplace cooking so that helped them through the night. Gosh, I was so worried about them too but they made it thru ok. Thank goodness it wasn't our normal cold winter night last night. I wonder what happened that everything went off? I always feel like the power company is showing us who is in control. un But I did see an ambulance go by shortly after it went off, so maybe a crash or something. The flooding was pretty bad here.

Jody

 

[speckledhen]

I'm crossing my fingers for those little babies in there, Jody. I've had a power outage of about an hour, but we cranked up the generator to keep things going.

 

[tiffanyh]

Jody, what did the temp get down too, just out of curiousity.

 

[banter]

If you have any way of heating up water you can try to keep the eggs warm by putting jars of hot water wrapped in towels in a cooler with the eggs. It's tedious, but I've done it and it works. I'm in the middle of an ice storm here and I'm very likely to loose power myself today.
I've already got the wood stove going and dug out a cooler. We have a generator but it takes a while to set it up safely.
POOR eggs!
Chris F in Maine

 

[hinkjc]

tiffany - It got down to around 70.

Thanks Chris - that is a good idea and one I haven't thought of, so I'll keep that in mind for next time. I know there will be a next time, which is really frustrating. I thought about running them out to my broodies, but it is just so many eggs and I really didn't think it would be off all night. Plus we're in the middle of a storm, so not the most ideal weather to be running around in during the middle of the night.

Jody

 

[RubberChickenLubber]

Don't give up yet. I got the flu about half way through my last incubation, and the bulb went out. I don't know how long, it was 3pm before I was able to check on them, and it was at room temp. Still had 11 hatch.

 

[4F FARM]

Jody,
I'm so sorry! That's what happened with my last batch. I lost them all. My temp got to 81. Our power was out for about 7 hours. Don't give up, maybe you will have better luck than I did.