Incubator advice. I think my "method" is faulty

greenaus · **Posted:** Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:43 am

I candled early this morning. I'm entering Day 14 now.

Improved candler, improved view. Well, kind of...

Not a lot to see. Big dark area in most eggs. Some movement of the dark area.

No bad smells. No obvious problems, but few obvious chicken shapes either. It's not like looking a perfect silhouette of a chicken or anything. :-)

Took out the one that seemed to have stopped developing at about 5 days. Opened it up. Seems I was right. Looked like about 5-7 days, based on the size of that live one last week from a cracked egg.

No bad smell, dead but not badly decomposed.

Beginning to wonder what the fuss is about throwing dead eggs out so they don't explode.

Stt · **Joined:** Sun Aug 19, 2007 7:01 pm **Posts:** 3006

after a while mate they do explode :lol:

Deans' Poultry · **Posted:** Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:55 am

They sure do Stuey

That dark part you're seeing in the egg greenaus could well be a chickie :-D

Egglive · **Joined:** Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:58 am **Posts:** 267

After day 14 the shadow just gets darker and more solid and you can't see much. If any haven't developed to the same degree it does become easier to spot the difference and get rid of the deadies.

I've left plenty of dudd eggs in when I just haven't got around to candling and none have exploded on me yet. I have had smelly duck eggs that I've had to find and get out, but not chook eggs. If something is really going bad - I've always been able to smell it. Sometimes though, the rotten eggs can seep goo, and if this gets on the surrounding eggs it can reduce the hatch rate of your good eggs.

luvmychooks · **Posted:** Fri Mar 07, 2008 6:44 pm

I have always left eggs with any sign of life in the incubator until full term for fear of throwing out a chick by mistake and have never had an egg explode, a couple have started seeping, i throw out the obvious ones though.

Deans' Poultry · **Posted:** Fri Mar 07, 2008 6:58 pm

luvmychooks wrote:

I have always left eggs with any sign of life in the incubator until full term for fear of throwing out a chick by mistake and have never had an egg explode, a couple have started seeping, i throw out the obvious ones though.

Exactly!! There's only one sure fire way of knowing whether an egg is fertile and that is to wait and see if it hatches or not!! :-D

greenaus · **Posted:** Sat Mar 08, 2008 2:01 am

I candled the seven remaining eggs that hadn't hatched Friday and decided three definitely had no hope. Upon opening them, it was confirmed. All dead.

The one that annoyed me most was an egg that was mis-shapen. It was a long oval shape with one end obviously smaller than the other. But, unfortunately the air sac was at the small end.

So, next time before I load eggs into the incubator, I'm going to check each one to make sure I know where the air sac is.

Anyway, I have left four in the incubator. None had any signs of life, no movement, but all seemed ok otherwise.

Sounds a little stupid. "Other than the fact they appear dead, they're fine". :-?

They'll be entering day 22 in a couple of hours and two of the four are large eggs, so it's not time to worry about them yet anyway.

Egglive · **Joined:** Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:58 am **Posts:** 267

Yes, I 've had a couple with the air sac on the other end. I usually pick this up at the day 7 candling. If the eggs looks a bit funny when I am setting it sometimes I candle at day one to check. But I usually discard very big or very small or odd looking eggs for incubating - they go in the flying pan with no problems at all!

There's no harm in trying, but I wouldn't get your hopes up too high on those remaining eggs. If they haven't pipped, they're not about to hatch. Many things can cause 'dead in shell' chicks. Common ones are: nutrition of breeders, temp fluctuations, humidity fluctuations. In any hatch I expect a number of these. With my E2 I usually get one in every two dozen, but when I had a little foamy which was less controlled, I used to get a lot. This time of year when a lot of birds are in moult or at the end of the laying season, you expect a couple more.

You've done extremely well - congrats.

greenaus · **Posted:** Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:50 am

Actually, for my first try at incubating -- with a home-made at that -- I reckon I did pretty good.

I started with 15 eggs. One was infertile. I dropped and cracked two. That leaves 12. Of those, four have hatched successfully.

So even if nothing else hatches I had a 33% success rate on my first try.

There are 8 in the second batch which is up to day 7, but I reckon they'll be affected by the high humidity, temperature changes and chickens running around on them from the first batch.

In future I plan to have a separate hatcher.

Deans' Poultry · **Posted:** Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:59 am

greenaus wrote:

I started with 15 eggs. One was infertile. I dropped and cracked two. That leaves 12. Of those, four have hatched successfully.

You were blaming the kids for dropping them a couple of weeks ago :-?

The truth ALWAYS comes out in the hatching! :lol:

Nah well done mate. I wouldn't have the confidence or knowhow for that matter to build my own incubator. Although with step by step guidence whilst holding my hand the whole time, i might just give it a go one day :-D

AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

Incubator advice. I think my "method" is faulty

Who is on the Forum