Hello emu lovers, I've been attempting to hatch emu eggs but have not been successful and am looking for some advice. For background: I work at a small zoo with some younger emus (probably around a year now), and some of our older emus out in the safari have been laying eggs and I've been asked to try and hatch them. Well the only thing I've hatched before are tortoise eggs, and these are quite different!
I've done the research on here and thought I got everything set up correctly, but am having trouble with my incubators. I will post pics at the bottom. The main one is a huge commercial chicken one that came to us second-hand and with no instructions! I do have directions on the panel though, so have been able to set the temp at 36.4C for a 50 day hatch and a target weight loss of 15%. The smaller incubators we just added for the extra eggs, and they are also difficult to keep stable. We weigh the eggs daily (and manually turn 3x a day during the work day) and adjust humidity as needed.... but here is where I'm stuck. We started with a batch of 6 (and now have like 20.... they keep giving me eggs to add) and the weight loss is ALL over the place. Like within the 6 original eggs in the large incubator, one might lose 0 g and one might lose 4 g and one might lose 6 g, then the next day the one that lost 6 g didn't lose any and the one that lost 4 g somehow gained 2 grams? (Could also have an inaccurate scale?). So I tried to take averages for how to adjust humidity, but it's so all over the place I'm not sure how to regulate it. It's not like one egg is consistently losing more than the others... I was hoping that the larger losses and random 0g losses would balance each other out, but they are all now lower than the target weight.
Being that these are large eggs and I now have quite a number of them, I'm not quite sure what alternatives I have for an incubator. Don't think I can convince management to buy a new one. Any ideas on how to improve this one?
Anyway, is this wonky humidity enough to halt development on the eggs? We are now at Day 60 for the original eggs and I am not convinced they will hatch... Is 65 usually the limit you wait? I want to open them to see if they are even fertile/have developed any but obviously don't want to kill anything that might still be living inside...
Also, some of our eggs had some holes in them that didn't go all the way through, is there any chance of these eggs making it? Is there anything I should do about that?
I'm open to any suggestions, as I would love to hatch some of these eggs but don't know how to proceed given my limited control on the incubator I'm using.
Edit: adding photos. The smaller incubator says 92F because I just took the lid off, that's not what it is set at!
I've done the research on here and thought I got everything set up correctly, but am having trouble with my incubators. I will post pics at the bottom. The main one is a huge commercial chicken one that came to us second-hand and with no instructions! I do have directions on the panel though, so have been able to set the temp at 36.4C for a 50 day hatch and a target weight loss of 15%. The smaller incubators we just added for the extra eggs, and they are also difficult to keep stable. We weigh the eggs daily (and manually turn 3x a day during the work day) and adjust humidity as needed.... but here is where I'm stuck. We started with a batch of 6 (and now have like 20.... they keep giving me eggs to add) and the weight loss is ALL over the place. Like within the 6 original eggs in the large incubator, one might lose 0 g and one might lose 4 g and one might lose 6 g, then the next day the one that lost 6 g didn't lose any and the one that lost 4 g somehow gained 2 grams? (Could also have an inaccurate scale?). So I tried to take averages for how to adjust humidity, but it's so all over the place I'm not sure how to regulate it. It's not like one egg is consistently losing more than the others... I was hoping that the larger losses and random 0g losses would balance each other out, but they are all now lower than the target weight.
Being that these are large eggs and I now have quite a number of them, I'm not quite sure what alternatives I have for an incubator. Don't think I can convince management to buy a new one. Any ideas on how to improve this one?
Anyway, is this wonky humidity enough to halt development on the eggs? We are now at Day 60 for the original eggs and I am not convinced they will hatch... Is 65 usually the limit you wait? I want to open them to see if they are even fertile/have developed any but obviously don't want to kill anything that might still be living inside...
Also, some of our eggs had some holes in them that didn't go all the way through, is there any chance of these eggs making it? Is there anything I should do about that?
I'm open to any suggestions, as I would love to hatch some of these eggs but don't know how to proceed given my limited control on the incubator I'm using.
Edit: adding photos. The smaller incubator says 92F because I just took the lid off, that's not what it is set at!
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