When do I give up on eggs hatching?

[Yuilethu]

Today is day 22 and I still have several eggs not hatched. I started with 10, 3 hatched over day 18 and 19. One more hatched this morning but he had curly toes. I made him shoes with what I had while I went out and got the proper tape and stiff paper to give him adequate shoes. When I came back from the store he was dead.

Three eggs are moving. One started hatching about two days ago (I was sleeping so I'm not sure exactly when he began) another got to unzipping and stopped. I've removed some of the shells from the moving eggs that had beaks poking out of them. Their membranes were dried out so I dropped some filtered water on there and set them back with higher humidity. It's been almost 5 hours and no one is making any attempt to hatch.

I have 3 cute little healthy quail chicks doing well. It seems terrible to toss eggs that are moving but not hatching, but they're past due and if the chick that hatched this morning is an indication of what the rest will end up like it seems kinder to just get rid of them now.

What do I do? What would you do?

 

[BackYardQuail]

Please specify what type of quail you have (I don't know the answer but I know that people wont answer until they know what type of quail it is).

 

[Yuilethu]

They are Texas A&M Coturnix quail.

 

[dc3085]

Your thermometer needs to be checked. i'd say your temps are running low. Give it one more day and toss the eggs, anything that hatches even now is likely to have developmental issues.

 

[James the Bald]

I agree with Don. Here are some suggestions before you incubate any more quail eggs. You will need a thermometer and a hydrometer. Having 2 is better, especially if they read the same when they are side by side. Also, in the future, you will want to open the incubator as little as possible. Each time the incubator is open, humidity escapes and the membrane dries out.

I personally think you got lucky with the 3 chicks you have. When your temps dropped on day 13, you may have had the incubator open for too long of a period when you swapped out the lamps and allowed all the humidity to escape. Here is a link you should check out. But don't give up; learn from this and try again.
James

 

[Yuilethu]

Thank you. I don't think I'm going to attempt to hatch more. I did have a combo hygrometer and thermometer. I knew that I opened it way too much, but the humidity never went down below 55 when I did so I assumed it wasn't going to kill them. I did however check my thermometer. I had the setup running a week ahead of time and checked it against two others, one being a candy thermometer which has mercury (or whatever they put in them now). I'm sure it was opening it that did them in, poor little peeps.