Some eggs hatching early. Confused.

[bre113]

This is my first hatch since I was a kid. Today's day 20, and I had two hatch during the night. I have several more pipped (can't tell how many because I have old styrofoam incubator with the really small viewing plastic.) but I have 35 eggs, 19 I KNOW were alive on day 17 from candling. What do I do when the first 24 hours since hatching is up if I still have unhatched eggs (ei. Do I remove hatched chicks, leave remaining eggs alone? As I know chicks can survive 24 hours on membrane. ) I'm just confuse about what to do after this time passes if some of the eggs that I know should hatch haven't yet, but I have chicks that need to come out.
Also, I had 5 chicks that appeared to have died between candling on day 14, and candling on day 17, and well as 4 that died pretty early, leaving a partial-full blood ring. Have I done something wrong? Thanks!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Don’t get hung up on the 21 day thing. There are a lot of reasons eggs might hatch early or late; heredity, humidity, how and how long eggs were stored before incubation started, or just basic differences in individual eggs. A huge factor is incubation temperature. If you incubator is a tad cool the eggs can be late. If it is just a little warm they can be early. Generally if the eggs hatch within 24 hours either side of the due date I consider them right on time. With them being a bit early your incubator may be running just a tiny bit warm, but then it might not. I see nothing major wrong with the timing but if your next two hatches are also early you might want to try to tweak the temperature down a tiny bit.

The chicks absorb the yolk before they hatch. They can live off of that for 3 days or more. I don’t know where you got that 24 hours on membrane. Its more than 72 hours on the absorbed yolk. That’s why they can be shipped in the mail, over 72 hours, usually a fair amount more. The chicks don’t need to come out after 24 hours. They need to come out after 3 days.

After your hatch is over I suggest you open the unhatched eggs and try to determine why they did not hatch. That’s not always easy. There are many different things that can cause an egg to not develop or die at any stage. In general if the egg stopped developing within the first week of incubation the cause was something that happened before incubation started. If it dies in the last week it probably had something to do with your actual incubation, but that is in general, not always true. This article may help you determine what happened.

http://urbanext.illinois.edu/eggs/res24-00.html

Congratulations on the hatch so far and good luck the rest of the way.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

This is my first hatch since I was a kid. Today's day 20, and I had two hatch during the night. I have several more pipped (can't tell how many because I have old styrofoam incubator with the really small viewing plastic.) but I have 35 eggs, 19 I KNOW were alive on day 17 from candling. What do I do when the first 24 hours since hatching is up if I still have unhatched eggs (ei. Do I remove hatched chicks, leave remaining eggs alone? As I know chicks can survive 24 hours on membrane. ) I'm just confuse about what to do after this time passes if some of the eggs that I know should hatch haven't yet, but I have chicks that need to come out.
Also, I had 5 chicks that appeared to have died between candling on day 14, and candling on day 17, and well as 4 that died pretty early, leaving a partial-full blood ring. Have I done something wrong? Thanks!

Leave your hatched biddies alone for at least 24 and preferably for 72 hours after hatching. Newly hatched chicks still have a gob of egg yoke attached to their abdomens and this needs to be absorbed (as food) before the chicks start dragging their yoke sacks or navels through all the germs that are present in chicken poop and brooders. It would be interesting and maybe educational to see where any dead chicks' heads are in relation to their bodies. If the head isn't tucked under the right wing that chick is not in the correct position to begin hatching.

If you have un-hatched eggs after day 22 toss them. The live chicks in the incubator will cheep their little heads off and this noise acts on un hatched biddies to stimulate the hatching instinct. You can observe this instinct when hen hatching because while the old hen is still on her nest she will call or cluck to her brood even in the night and the chicks will answer. I believe that the pecking order is at work even at this young age because I think that instinctively none of the chicks want to be the youngest or last hatched and run the risk of ending up at the bottom of the pecking order.

 

[bre113]

Thank you! I knew my incubator was closer to 100, but I tried turning it down muptiple times, but it never would come down! We hope to invest in a new incubator soon, as we constantly want eggs in the bator to raise for meat. We just wanted to see how this round went first before making a final decision.
We collected eggs for 6 days before incubation. I put the eggs in the turner inside the incubator base, but without the top, and turned the turner on until I got all the eggs collected, then I put the top on and turned it on.
My daughter (3) helped me collect eggs, so tough handling may have been the culprit to those which never developed at all (6) and those that died early (4) but it's hard to tell her no when our chickens just started laying for the first time, and she's thrilled to collect eggs! Lol if that's what it comes to, I'll take the loss of a few chicks.
Also, I wasn't expecting the best turn out, because our hens had just started laying a week- two weeks before, and some eggs were still a little awkward shaped, and one was cracked and I didn't know it.
This is much better than my last batch already though! Last time I put the eggs in upside down, and all the chicks died, almost all fully developed.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Pullet eggs like that are harder to hatch and raise that eggs from hens that have been laying longer. There are a lot of things that the hen has to get right for the egg to hatch and sometimes it takes a while for the pullet to get the kinks worked out of her internal egg making factory. What is amazing to me is how many get it right to start with.

I’ve hatched pullet eggs before and will continue to do so when I want to. But I normally don’t get as good a hatch rate with pullet eggs as with larger eggs. Sometimes I get great hatch rates but often I don’t.

I seldom lose a chick after it hatches, whether hatched under a broody and raised by a broody or hatched in an incubator and raised in my brooder. When I lose one it is often the chicks from those tiny pullet eggs. Since the eggs are small they don’t contain as many nutrients as the bigger eggs so the chick is limited in how big and strong it can grow. They are smaller and I believe weaker than the other chicks. While those baby chicks are normally really tough that little bit of difference in them seems to make the pullet egg chicks more difficult to raise. Still, if you can get through the first couple of weeks with them they should do great.

I’ve read that smaller eggs tend to hatch earlier than larger eggs but I really haven’t noticed that to be consistent. Maybe a little bit sometimes but not really by much.

 

[bre113]

Interesting! Kind of what I figured, but we have 4 chicks now, 2 I can definitely see are pipped, and on I can see looks cracked half way around, so we know there should be atleast 7 to hatch. I think we're doing pretty good so far with eggs from inexperienced hens being hatched by an inexperienced hatcher in a cheap incubator! Lol you have to start somewhere though!!

 

[bre113]

We currently have 6 hatched right not, and 2 hatching!

 

[Tennessee Great Granny]

This is years after the first post but it seems we are all having different experiences with hatching and egg conditions, and I love to read old problem solving posts. I've hatched out tiny eggs and big hunkin eggs and have had success. Not all tiny eggs go on to develop to term. While the same is true for huge eggs, the incident of egg death does seem higher on tiny eggs. I've also found not all tiny eggs are pullet eggs. Some of the old gal's eggs start out with tiny eggs that get big and then go tiny again. We hatched out one very tiny egg that I doubted it's viability long enough to hatch. We named this baby Flea. And decided to keep this runty chicken because we love Flea's old momma. Flea grew big and feisty in no time and became king of the brooder. Some people fell in love with him and I had to sell him to such a loving family. Flea did not stay a runty chick.
I have one incubator that in itself measures identical to the others but it feels warmer, and an independent measurement show almost one degree warmer. The chicks hatch out 2-3 days earlier as a rule in that incubator no matter what the breed.
Tiny cracks are no problem but I tend to incubate them separately in their own incubator hand turning them. I used a thin coat of wax on the crack just as soon as it's noted. I usually wipe off fecal matter from eggs with a paper towel moistened with peroxide on all eggs I hatch, but not all the bloom if possible- just the fecal matter. I do the same with a cracked egg. The longer a cracked egg sits in an unsealed cracked state the higher the chances are of bacterial contamination. One must act quickly on the fracture. I melt a white birthday candle in a disposable bowl in the microwave and gently brush it over the crack to seal it. This only needs a light coat since we're not painting it but just sealing it. I also have used something else when I didn't have any birthday candles handy. I usually have a tube of liquid skin, which is actually the very same formula as super glue but was developed for use on human skin to seal cut skin edges together. Super glue seems to be a bit harsher, and I want to know what I am using is okay for animals as well as people, so I stick with liquid skin. I buy it at the local dollar store. I do not stick a freshly glued egg into my incubator -it's cradled break side up for a couple hours to make sure it's super dried. Nothing like having an egg glued to the inside of the incubator! I tear out just the right size of disposable tissue to just cover the crack and use the liquid skin to wet all of it make it adhere. The liquid skin must cover all of the crack, the tissue is to add strength. If that egg is going to start growing bacteria , when you candle it you'll see a black growth all around the crack upon candling. I had this black stuff show up three days before an expected hatch and the baby still came out fine, She is my favorite midget white turkey of all time and has been a survivor since before she was born (she's also survived a scalping by an aggressive tom and was the only survivor of a deadly dog attack) We named her Grace. If people are in a hurry and don't have time to coddle the eggs, or assist the hatch if need be by all means toss the cracked eggs out.I find the sweet babies I get worth my efforts. I raise only buff Orpington chickens. Hardiness and viability may very well depend upon the breed being raised. I also raise white Sebastopol geese and Midget White turkeys and it's the same with their eggs. My geese only lay 25-35 eggs per year. There's not a single egg I want to waste.