I abandoned the daily posts for our Christmas hatch. I hate that I did, but, let's face it, it was a crazy time of year to hatch eggs. Christmas is already so hectic and I added a lot to the madness by trying to do daily posts about our hatch.
So, I'll sum up what happened in the last week in this post.
The chicks continued to thrive inside their shells as Hatch Day came closer and closer. When candled, they went from tiny moving blobs during the second week to shadows that took up the whole shell during the last week. It was fascinating to watch them grow and develop in just 3 weeks time. I mean, WOW! That's not a lot of time for a life to develop, but it did and I was amazed.
At the end of Day 18, I moved the incubator from our bedroom to the kitchen table. The reason for the move was so that I could install the webcam so that I could live stream the hatch and so that my family and I could pile around the kitchen table to watch the chicks as they hatched.
When I moved the incubator, I candled the eggs, as planned, to check viability before lock down. I was a bit nervous about candling and moving them, but once I saw that 7 of the eggs had internally pipped, I got really nervous! They were out of the incubator and neither the temperature nor the humidity was right for them to hatch properly, so I began to rush. I quickly candled them, marked the air cells, circled the internal pips, removed the egg turner, filled the rest of the troughs inside the incubator with water, put the eggs inside, replaced the lid and duck taped it down. Also, when I candled them, I felt like the air cells were not as small as they needed to be at that point. But, what do I know. This was my first time incubating eggs. And, as I was candling one of the eggs, the chick inside chirped at me. FASCINATING!!
For hours after that, I fought sleep as I adjusted the temperature on the incubator up and down trying to dial it in just right. Once I thought I finally had it (and my body couldn't fight sleep any longer), I felt okay with going to bed.
The next morning (Day 19), I checked the incubator as soon as I got up. The incubator temperature had skyrocketed to a deadly 104 degrees Fahrenheit! I immediately ripped the duck tape off and opened the lid to let the heat out, praying I wasn't too late and that the chicks hadn't fried in their little eggs.
I worked on adjusting the temperature once again while everyone got ready for church that morning and fortunately was able to get it to 99.5-100 degrees before we left. When we got back home, the temperature was the same and I celebrated, but I still held my breath because I knew the odds were good that I had killed them with the 104 temperature.
So, Sunday morning we had church and then practice for our children's Christmas play. Then, we went back to church that evening for our Christmas service where the kids performed their play and we had a birthday party for Jesus afterward. Around 11:00 p.m. that evening, I noticed a pip in one of the shells. An hour later, there was no more progress, but I could still see the chick moving through the crack it had made in the shell. Knowing it could be a while before it hatched out, I went to bed and called it a night.
Monday morning (Day 20), I woke up to 2 more pipped shells. The first chick had unzipped but there was no longer any movement. I knew from reading that they can sometimes take long breaks while hatching so I thought that's what was going on with it. It ended up dying before it could get out of it's shell.
At lunchtime we left for my families Christmas get-together at my Mom's. The webcam was up and running then and I was able to keep somewhat of an eye on what was going on with them. With the webcam, I could see about half of the eggs in the shot, so not all of them were in the shot, but it was better than nothing. I could hear them chirping inside their shells, but never saw any movement from any that had hatched out while we were away. We arrived back home around 3:00 p.m. and at 3:35, our first chick popped out of it's shell.
During the rest of the evening, chicks continued to quickly pip their shells, unzip, and push their way into the world. I went to bed with 5 hatched chicks drying in the incubator. On Christmas Day (Day 21), there was an extra chick in the incubator and only one more chick hatched after that for a total of 7 chicks.
Another chick had a saddled air cell and had pipped in the wrong place during the afternoon of Christmas. Against my better judgement, I helped it out of it's shell that evening, making it the 8th chick and final chick to hatch. It's yolk sac was not fully absorbed. It actually didn't look like it was even close to being fully absorbed. It laid in the incubator not moving very much at all. I thought it would die within hours. To my surprise, by the time I went to bed that night, the little chick was up, walking around some and trying to climb over eggs. All the other chicks had been moved to the brooder by then so it had the incubator to itself to dry, rest, and recover from an rough, eventful hatch.
Then overnight, something devastating happened. I'm not going into detail on exactly what happened, because it's too upsetting, but it left us with only 3 chicks: 2 in the brooder and the one in the incubator.
The chick that I helped out of it's shell gained strength as the days went on. The umbilical wound where it's yolk hadn't absorbed ended up drying, but never did fall off. The little chick was about half the size of the other 2 chicks, but it was thriving and doing remarkably well. The only problem it was having was that it would get flipped over on it's back and wasn't able to get back on it's legs. We all kept an eye on it and would flip it back over whenever needed.
At 6 days old, I noticed one of the chicks was cross-beaked (aka scissor beak). At that point it wasn't too bad. I did a little research and found that it was not curable, but the chick still had the possibility of doing just fine as long as it didn't get too bad.
At 7 days old, the chick that I helped out of it's shell dyed. I don't know what happened. It was found in the brooder dead for no apparent reason. My husband found it when he got up Monday morning to go to work. He said it was laying on it's back and the wound at it's umbilical was oozing yellow stuff. Maybe it got flipped over on it's back and the other chicks pecked it's umbilical. I'm really not sure.
Only 3 days after noticing the cross-beak chick, it has gotten significantly worse. The chick is now having a difficult time eating and seems to be getting frustrated with not being able to pick up food. I'm not really sure what to do about it so I'm just going to keep an eye on it and hope that it does okay in the long run. I'm going to have to do further research to see if there is anything I can do to help, but from what I've read, I don't think there's much that I can do.
I have asked a friend to take the last chick, once it is grown and we are sure it is a girl, in the event that the cross-beak chick doesn't make it. I feel the last chick will have a better chance of integrating in with her 3 girls than it would integrating in with my larger flock since it is just one chick.
Honestly, this has been a depressing experience. It was so exciting seeing all the chicks hatch, but it was also hard seeing so many that developed fully, but didn't hatch.
So, here are the lessons I have learned in all of this.
1. Candle on the "proper" days and mark the air cells to track the growth. I candled them, but I forgot to mark the air cells on the right days, so I didn't have as much information to go by as I would have had had I done it "right".
2. I wonder if I should've sterilized the eggs before putting them into the incubator. If the incubator is sterilized and everything else is, why shouldn't the eggs be sterile too? This is something I'll have to research more before I hatch again.
3. Before putting the incubator on lock down, write the egg numbers so they are visible on all sizes of the eggs. Once the eggs started hatching, I couldn't tell which eggs they were because the numbers were on a side of the egg that was out of sight. And once chicks started hatching and running around the incubator, they knocked the eggs around so much that there was no way I could keep track of what egg was which number. So I will definitely remember to do that next time.
4. Don't over-do it with the humidity. I think that's why I didn't have a better hatch rate. I think the humidity was too high during incubation and probably during lock down too. The air cells were smaller than what they needed to be on Day 18. Next time, I will definitely use lower humidity during incubation and possibly during hatching too and see if that makes a difference.
5. Don't get in a hurry when doing the final candling. I ended up having a stinky egg in the incubator and I think I might have caught it if I had taken the time to really candle the eggs well before lock down and make sure they were all viable. Though the egg didn't explode (thank goodness!), I wonder if the bacteria from the egg still got into the incubator and infected other eggs, potentially causing them not to hatch. It's just a theory, but it could have been prevented had I not been in such a hurry. Instead, I panicked when I saw some of them had internally pipped and rushed through the candling to get them in the incubator.
6. Don't set eggs in the middle of the night! This was the dumbest idea ever!!!! Because I set the eggs in the middle of the night, I had to sit up late that first night trying to get the temperature right. Then I was up late on Day 18 when I put the incubator on lock down, to get the temperature right on the incubator again, and still, probably fried some of the eggs anyway. So, next time, I'll set them in the morning so I have all day to tinker with the incubator and make sure everything is running smoothly before bedtime.
7. Make sure you've got accurate, high quality instruments. I had 3 thermometers and I don't know how accurate any of them were because my readings were all over the board sometimes. The bulb thermometer read several degrees higher than the two digital thermometer/hygrometers. The digital ones were pretty close to the same reading. So I will be researching some different types of thermometer/hygrometers and getting a new one (or two) for the next hatch.
8. Don't pay big money for fertile eggs until you KNOW what you're doing. Before I started incubating these eggs, I did a LOT of research. I honestly felt pretty confident that I could do this and have a very successful hatch. Boy, was I wrong. It turns out that the what the humidity that the incubator needs to be will vary according to your location. What works for one person just won't work for another. This, I truly believe, was my biggest problem. Humidity. I cranked the humidity up as high as I could get it, and by doing so, I had a horrible hatch rate. If I had spent hundreds of dollars on eggs that didn't hatch, I would have been a very unhappy hatcher! Thank God, again, for friends that are willing to help and give some eggs away for free. Once you're comfortable hatching and you really have it figured out, then go spend all you want. But I'd make sure you have a couple really good hatches where you had really good hatch rates and you are seriously comfortable with the whole process first. Unless you just have disposable money that you can spend on eggs. Then, go for it! That's not the case for me.
9. If possible, use a separate hatcher. Having a second incubator set up with the right humidity and temperature for hatching would have been so helpful! It would have saved me from staying up all the night of Day 18 when I was up adjusting the temperature and still ended up with a crazy 104 degree temp the morning of Day 19. With a separate hatcher, you just move the eggs from the incubator to the hatcher and go on about your day...or go to bed if it's in the middle of the night like it was for me.
10. If you're not using a separate hatcher, don't adjust the temperature on the incubator when putting it on lock down. I messed up big time when I started adjusting the temperature dial up and down. Instead, I should have left it alone to do it's thing and just kept an eye on it until it settled.
11. Add 100 degree water instead of tap water or room temperature water. I used a gallon jug of room temperature distilled water that I added blue food coloring to. It worked fine when I topped off the water during incubation, but when I filled up the water troughs for lock down, it sent the temperature to crazy-mode. I should've heated the water to about the same temperature as the incubator so that the water didn't have to be heated up by the air temperature in the incubator. This would've saved me a lot of time and headache and that night's sleep that I missed out on when I was up adjusting the temperature at the end of Day 18.
Fortunately, I kept good records on paper, so when I do decide to try hatching eggs again, I will have record of what worked and what didn't. I'm no longer a "first timer", but I am still a newbie and the next time I'll use just as much care and caution as I did this time, just with a little more experience-based knowledge behind it.
Sometimes knowing what mistakes someone else made will help you to not make the same mistakes as they did. That is my hope. That this will help someone else have a successful hatch and be able to enjoy incubating and hatching their own eggs. Just know that it does take time to figure out what will work best for you. Be patient. Read as much as you can about the process. Make notes or use a calendar to help you remember what to do on which days.
I wish you the VERY BEST in your own incubating and hatching adventures!
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