Emu egg incubation... 1 month in... POWER CUT :(

[Reebz]

Hi guys, so I don’t really know what I’m hoping to achieve with this post, other than (at the very least) to utilise my current situation as an informative experiment for others to refer to, should they find themselves in a similar situation to me right now.



So it is my first time trying a bit of pot luck incubating an emu egg. I’ve got a Brinsea Advance incubator which is amazing. Started incubating on 27th Feb, at a temp of 36.5°C and humidity between 25%-35%. Swift manual turning of egg x3 daily every 24 hours.



Everything was going perfectly, until this morning. I am now devastated. I wake up to discover there was a power cut, and had been without power for about 4 hours. Upon discovery, the internal temp of the Brinsea was down to about 24°C. The egg was still relatively warm, considering. This could be an extra kick in goolies, as it may indicate that there is (or was, I mean) something growing inside the egg at this stage.



I managed to get it connected to a temporary generator immediately upon my discovery of the power loss. I was only informed by a neighbour that the power cut occurred 4 hours prior to my discovery of it (we use the same electricity grid).



So basically I am in tears now, and devastated at this- as I feel it is a real loss. I will continue to incubate the egg to full term regardless, but I really do not hold out much hope.



I guess I just wanted to share this experience with you guyz, and I will defo let you know at the end of the incubation period what the outcome is, whether I get a hatch or not.



This is a hard lesson for me to learn and I am gutted and will make sure I stockpile apocalypse-proof generators for any future crisis such as this.

 

[RosemaryDuck]

Hi guys, so I don’t really know what I’m hoping to achieve with this post, other than (at the very least) to utilise my current situation as an informative experiment for others to refer to, should they find themselves in a similar situation to me right now.



So it is my first time trying a bit of pot luck incubating an emu egg. I’ve got a Brinsea Advance incubator which is amazing. Started incubating on 27th Feb, at a temp of 36.5°C and humidity between 25%-35%. Swift manual turning of egg x3 daily every 24 hours.



Everything was going perfectly, until this morning. I am now devastated. I wake up to discover there was a power cut, and had been without power for about 4 hours. Upon discovery, the internal temp of the Brinsea was down to about 24°C. The egg was still relatively warm, considering. This could be an extra kick in goolies, as it may indicate that there is (or was, I mean) something growing inside the egg at this stage.



I managed to get it connected to a temporary generator immediately upon my discovery of the power loss. I was only informed by a neighbour that the power cut occurred 4 hours prior to my discovery of it (we use the same electricity grid).



So basically I am in tears now, and devastated at this- as I feel it is a real loss. I will continue to incubate the egg to full term regardless, but I really do not hold out much hope.



I guess I just wanted to share this experience with you guyz, and I will defo let you know at the end of the incubation period what the outcome is, whether I get a hatch or not.



This is a hard lesson for me to learn and I am gutted and will make sure I stockpile apocalypse-proof generators for any future crisis such as this.

4 hours isn't enough to for sure kill it. I am by no means an expert on emus, but I've had power failures before and heard from plenty of others. Some people have gone 8-9 hours of outage, restart and have success with their hatch. The odds are lower, but it doesn't mean instant death. It will likely hatch a few days late (if fertile). Incubators hold onto extra heat for quite some time after the initial outage. Keep incubating, and see what happens! Hope this helps.

 

[nuthatched]

I think the egg will probably be fine, eggs are surprisingly resilient.

 

[Reebz]

4 hours isn't enough to for sure kill it. I am by no means an expert on emus, but I've had power failures before and heard from plenty of others. Some people have gone 8-9 hours of outage, restart and have success with their hatch. The odds are lower, but it doesn't mean instant death. It will likely hatch a few days late (if fertile). Incubators hold onto extra heat for quite some time after the initial outage. Keep incubating, and see what happens! Hope this helps.

Bless you, really appreciate your comforting words! I am trying not to be too optimistic, but a small positive was the fact that the incubator did seem to retain a substantial amount of heat, at 24.5°C upon discovery, so by no means was it stone cold! Thank you so much, I will keep my fingers crossed for the little guy!

 

[Reebz]

I think the egg will probably be fine, eggs are surprisingly resilient.

Ah thank you! I’m no scientist, but I was hoping the fact that emu egg shells are so thick might come as an advantage in this situation!