No Movement on Day 17

[Nabiki]

I needed to wait 30 minutes lol. He was the first one to hatch

I was going to say that the pip looked fine to me. Congrats!

 

[SilliestGoose]

So my second egg finally zipped... this one doesn't look as good. My first indication that something was wrong is it took him a lot longer than the first to zip. When he finally did finish zipping and hatched, his right eye looks really swollen. The healthy chick I have is also pecking at him and he's not as healthy out of the egg. Any indication on what happened here and what needs to happen next?

 

[Nabiki]

So my second egg finally zipped... this one doesn't look as good. My first indication that something was wrong is it took him a lot longer than the first to zip. When he finally did finish zipping and hatched, his right eye looks really swollen. The healthy chick I have is also pecking at him and he's not as healthy out of the egg. Any indication on what happened here and what needs to happen next?

That doesn't look good. Personally, I would cull. It's hard to say exactly what happened, but something didn't develop right.

 

[SilliestGoose]

thank you! I did assist this chick in crossing the rainbow bridge early this morning. It took some nerves, since I have never done this before and it was such a tiny animal, but it was over quickly without any suffering. The skull was deformed and the eye had doubled in size overnight- it was liable to rupture if I left it and was likely causing undue suffering. I have 4 healthy chicks so far and that's what I'm choosing to focus on.

That doesn't look good. Personally, I would cull. It's hard to say exactly what happened, but something didn't develop right.

 

[Nabiki]

thank you! I did assist this chick in crossing the rainbow bridge early this morning. It took some nerves, since I have never done this before and it was such a tiny animal, but it was over quickly without any suffering. The skull was deformed and the eye had doubled in size overnight- it was liable to rupture if I left it and was likely causing undue suffering. I have 4 healthy chicks so far and that's what I'm choosing to focus on.

I know it's hard. Physically, it's very easy, but emotionally, I hate culling chicks. From what you've said, though, it was probably the kindest thing you could have done for the poor thing.

 

[SilliestGoose]

Thank you all for the help!!

I got 4 healthy chicks out of the batch of 14 (not including the one I had to cull).

I went through the rest of the eggs today to see what stage of development they were at so I can see what affected my hatch rate, and I didn't notice a discernable amount of development on a single egg I cracked. A few questions:

1) Am I correct that none of these eggs developed? This is my first time and my eyes aren't trained.

2) Would this be consistent with mishandling during shipping? They were lost in the mail for a week before they got to me

3) What other issues could this be indicative of? I believe you can't tell if they were fertilized at all once you start the incubation process bc it degrades the blastoderm, yes?

Thank you all

 

[Nabiki]

That does look like a bit of rotten mess. I would guess that your low hatch rate came from mishandling during shipping.

 

[SilliestGoose]

That does look like a bit of rotten mess. I would guess that your low hatch rate came from mishandling during shipping.

Yes I luckily have no sense of smell- I bet it was awful. It made it difficult to discern what was and wasn't development, but i couldn't see any traces of it. During incubation I candled, but didn't toss, so I could practice identifying viable vs nonviable eggs without risking tossing out a good one. Every egg that developed seemed to hatch for me