Farm Hatching-Epic Fail

jward

passin' thru
I only had a 60% success this spring too. I was using a cheap brinsea model, with the self turn, no humidity alarms etc.. but I think here, (NWMO) the problem was most likely that I gathered the eggs to be hatched on 2 separate days
 

Wildwood

Veteran Member
I just ran two different tests on the unhatched eggs.
Candled them all.
About half showed nothing.
Infertile.

The other half showed development.

Then I did the water float test mentioned above.
All of the ones that showed development floated.

Then we tried one of the infertile eggs.
It floated, too.


Doesn't seem that this was a good test :(
Since this is day 23, I put them back in the incubator for another day or two
THE TEST IS NOT FOR FLOATING. It's only to listen for peeps. If there is a live baby, it will probably make noise when the egg hits the cold water. It's called water candling. They don't like the sudden temp change and FYI, if the chick is live, it will probably sink but that is irrelevant. You have to listen for a baby chirp...that is the test. This is used mainly for dark eggs that are hard to candle using the light. My blue and green eggs are sometimes almost impossible to candle in the late stages. I've found a live chick in an egg that was way overdue with this method.

Edited to add...the floating test is only for eggs you plan to eat.
 
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meandk0610

Veteran Member
Kathleen, thanks for your input.
Until several weeks ago, the chickens were free ranged.
Then something (coon or fox) got two hens and a rooster.

I started confining to a chicken yard and supplementing their layer pellets with scratch
I had two thermometers in the incubator.
One was 99.5 and the other was @101.

It's a puzzle to me
The layer pellets could be the problem. The calcium is too high for roosters. It causes infertility and kidney damage in them.
 

Barry Natchitoches

Has No Life - Lives on TB
I have several thoughts. One is that it's possible that roosters lose fertility in really hot weather, like many other animals do (sperm are very temperature-sensitive). Commercial hatcheries, I think, keep their flocks in climate-controlled conditions so they can hatch all summer.

It could be an incubator issue -- do you have a separate digital thermometer that you can put in the incubator, to have a better handle on the actual temperatures?

It could be that they are missing something in their feed -- what the chickens are eating strongly affects the health of the germ-cell inside the egg (which ought to put paid to the notion that what the chickens are eating doesn't affect the nutritional benefits of eggs for human consumption).

Kathleen
I had two hens - one in each housing unit - decided to go broody a few weeks ago.

so I gave each of them a few eggs. The babies are hatching as I write this - three are already hatched. Best I can tell, I am experiencing better than 50% hatching rate despite many days in excess off 100 degree heat.

so heat alone probably isn’t the sole problem.

that incubator is not known for being a good one.

Brinsea’s - while pricy - are much more reliable.
 

summerthyme

Administrator
_______________
6 of 8 of mine hatched a day early, which I had not heard of before. Late, yes, but not early. Suggest keeping on eye on them.
That's usually either due to very warm temps in the henhouse, or a slightly too-high temp in the incubator. I once went to remove my egg turner, and found two fluffed, fully dry chicks perched on top of it!

Summerthyme
 

Luke

Silent Grey Fellow
That's usually either due to very warm temps in the henhouse, or a slightly too-high temp in the incubator. I once went to remove my egg turner, and found two fluffed, fully dry chicks perched on top of it!

Summerthyme
That could have been the case. I had two thermometers; one was part of the incubator, the other for a second opinion. They were maybe (don't remember exactly) 3-4 degrees apart. My early birds were discovered when I got back home and heard birds chirping in my kitchen.
 

Cag3db1rd

Paranoid Pagan
101f is way too high a temp. If I accidentally go that high, I don't expect anything out of my hatch. That is exactly why my last hatch failed, in fact. I keep a thermometer right down by the eggs. I also try to err on the side of a little low. 98f or so still usually hatches. 100f and above never hatches for me.
 

Border Collie Dad

Flat Earther
101f is way too high a temp. If I accidentally go that high, I don't expect anything out of my hatch. That is exactly why my last hatch failed, in fact. I keep a thermometer right down by the eggs. I also try to err on the side of a little low. 98f or so still usually hatches. 100f and above never hatches for me.
The cheap little thermometer that came with the incubator was most accurate using the ice water test.

BTW, I got 4 hatches out of 12.
Most of the others fully developed but couldn't hatch
 

shepherdess

Member
I’m sorry, but I stopped reading after “Little Giant”. I had one with huge problems. All my hatches would fail, but the digital setting was 99.5. I bought an extra thermometer, and also put in a monitor from my greenhouse thermometer. That had a memory function, it showed random spikes of temperatures up to 105! But yet the digital control still read 99.5. I wrote a detailed email to the company describing the problem, and with no other reply Little Giant set a new digital heater just like the one I had, that was not working correctly. Guess what? Same issues with the new one. Temperature spikes were killing eggs. So I’m all done with the Little Giants. I have a styrofoam Hovabator with the wafer thermostat instead of digital. It works every time!
 
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