Trying to troubleshoot terrible pekin bantam hatch

[Waterfaery]

I’ve just had my worst hatch rate ever - only 3 chicks out of 13 pekin bantam eggs! I’ve done lots of hatches but It’s my first time hatching bantams and I’m wondering if they need any extra care compared to large fowl or if the problem was likely the eggs themselves. I know that it must come down to either incubation settings, egg storage and handling, or breeder health and nutrition so I’m trying to troubleshoot it.

I’m using a Brinsea Maxi 24 Ex so fully automatic. I put some of my own large fowl eggs in with them and had 100% success with them so I think I can rule out incubator settings, unless bantams require different settings? After the first couple of days I did notice that the bantam eggs were rolling a bit far each side, between 120 and 180 degrees each way, so I changed the turning angle to suit them and they turned fine at closer to 100 degrees. Would overturning for the first couple of days cause a problem?

I normally dry hatch so that’s what I did and I’m wondering if bantams need higher humidity? It stayed in the high 30s to mid 40s throughout and I set it to 65 for lockdown, although most of the bantams were already dead by then. The ones that made it to lockdown were maybe 1g lighter than they should have been but I don’t know if that’s enough to make a huge difference and my scale only has a 1g accuracy anyway. I did think the air cells were quite large relative to the egg size but it is my first time with bantam eggs so I don’t know how normal or abnormal they were.

I had three types of losses. A lot were blood rings early on. A few were late quitters, sometime between day 14 and 18. The last loss was one chick that was definitely alive going into lockdown but never pipped internally. I will do an eggtopsy but it’s still in the incubator for now, just on the off chance, but there is no sign of life in it on day 22.

I didn’t know the seller but they live not too far away so the eggs were collected, not shipped. They came to meet me half way so I didn’t see the parents but they did send me videos of them and they looked well and in good condition. I don’t know anything about their nutrition. I do know that there are only two hens and the seller bought them as a (supposed) unrelated breeding trio from a different, larger scale breeder. They are pure bred lavender so I wonder how much inbreeding may be involved. They said they bought them last autumn and they were young growers at the time.

The seller I bought from seemed very honest, genuine and helpful but I have since researched the large breeder they bought the parent birds from originally and I saw that they were going out of business and selling off their stock around that time last autumn.

Some of the eggs were a tiny bit dirty but nothing unusual. I thought it was a normal, acceptable level of dirt. Lots of them had quite a patchy, blotchy look to the shell when I candled them before setting. I’ve seen that before with my first ever hatch which was shipped eggs and that hatch also didn’t do well, although not even nearly as bad as this. Are pekin bantam eggs usually very porous?

I’d really like to try again because I want to add pekin bantams to my flock so I’d love to know if there’s anything I can improve in the way I incubated them or if I just need to look for a different source. I will buy a scale with a higher accuracy down to lower weights but otherwise, is there anything else anyone can advise or does anyone have a theory about the most likely possible cause(s)?

Thanks so much for any help.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm not familiar with that incubator but it looks like it turns the eggs by rolling them, not tilting them back and forth. When you turn them by hand you turn them a full 180 degrees each time. That turning worked for your other eggs, it should have been fine for the bantam eggs.

You can read a lot of fabulous fantastical things about hatching bantam eggs on the internet. The only one I believe is that sometimes bantam eggs can hatch a bit earlier than full-sized eggs. But my full-sized fowl eggs can regularly hatch earlier than the full 21 days whether under a broody or in my calibrated incubator. You can read enough stories on this forum where bantam eggs did not hatch earlier than other eggs. I personally do not put any faith in bantam eggs needing to be treated differently than other eggs though I do believe that different flocks (bantam or full-sized) can have certain trends. I think your hatch rate with your own eggs demonstrates it was something to do with the eggs themselves, not your incubation of them.

Several things were not in your control. You don't know how old those eggs were, how long they had been stored or what conditions they were stored in. Were they turned during storage? You don't know about the health if the parent flock or what nutrition they were getting. One time I drove to get 30 eggs from a breeder. When I drove them home I set them on the floor of the back seat on rough country roads. Those eggs were so badly shaken only 10 out of 30 hatched. Most didn't even start to develop. Do you know how well the other person cushioned those eggs when they drove to meet you?

There are a lot of things that could have contributed to a bad hatch with those specific eggs. I personally do not believe that them being bantam was a contributing factor.

Do you have the paperwork that came with that incubator? Does it say you need to treat bantam eggs differently? Or contact Brinsea directly and ask them about bantam eggs. They are supposed to be the experts.

 

[Susan Skylark]

You’ve done this way more than me (day 14 of my third hatch ever) but it seems like you’ve done a good analysis and ruling out various issues. I’m a quail ‘expert’, never taken chicken eggs to hatch, but there may be something in the turning early on as they are small eggs. I borrowed a nurture right 360 for my first hatch, I used the chicken rail and it wasn’t great for quail eggs, at least the outer ring. The smaller slots on the inner ring was great but the outer ring was a disaster. My second hatch I hand turned everything and it was great. I’m now using a cheap Amazon incubator that seems to be doing a good job (we’ll see on Tuesday!) but has a turner adjustable to quail. If your other eggs developed fine it wasn’t the incubator. They developed so at least they were fertile. It could be a nutritional or genetic issue (do bantams have any lethal color genetic issues?, quail have issues with homozygous silver). That they were fertile and developed makes nutrition a less likely issue (still possible but I’d expect infertile, poor or no eggs, mostly early embryonic death etc).

 

[Waterfaery]

I'm not familiar with that incubator but it looks like it turns the eggs by rolling them, not tilting them back and forth. When you turn them by hand you turn them a full 180 degrees each time. That turning worked for your other eggs, it should have been fine for the bantam eggs.


Do you have the paperwork that came with that incubator? Does it say you need to treat bantam eggs differently? Or contact Brinsea directly and ask them about bantam eggs. They are supposed to be the experts.

Thanks so much.

Yes, I do have the manual. It doesn't mention bantam eggs in particular. It just references different sized eggs in the part about turning.

You're right, it does roll them. It recommends that the eggs should turn between 90 and 120 degrees. It alternates directions so each time it rolls them back to upright and then to the other side. It controls the angle by the number of seconds it's set to roll them for and it says smaller eggs will need to roll for a shorter amount of time than larger eggs to achieve the same turning angle.

It says if there are eggs of different sizes, to set it so that the largest eggs turn at least 90 degrees but when I had it like that I was concerned that the bantams eggs were rolling way too much because I've read that they can get the umbilical cord twisted. I don't know how true that is but I decided to change it to roll them perfectly, since the large fowl eggs were only in there as extras. If anything, the large fowl eggs would have turned less than recommended and they hatched fine. It's good to hear that they can safely be turned 180 degrees and I think you're right that the turning probably wasn't the issue.

You can read a lot of fabulous fantastical things about hatching bantam eggs on the internet. The only one I believe is that sometimes bantam eggs can hatch a bit earlier than full-sized eggs. But my full-sized fowl eggs can regularly hatch earlier than the full 21 days whether under a broody or in my calibrated incubator. You can read enough stories on this forum where bantam eggs did not hatch earlier than other eggs.

The bantams didn't hatch earlier for me. It was two large fowl first, then one bantam, then the rest of the large fowl and then the other two bantams were last.

I think your hatch rate with your own eggs demonstrates it was something to do with the eggs themselves, not your incubation of them.

Several things were not in your control. You don't know how old those eggs were, how long they had been stored or what conditions they were stored in. Were they turned during storage? You don't know about the health if the parent flock or what nutrition they were getting. One time I drove to get 30 eggs from a breeder. When I drove them home I set them on the floor of the back seat on rough country roads. Those eggs were so badly shaken only 10 out of 30 hatched. Most didn't even start to develop. Do you know how well the other person cushioned those eggs when they drove to meet you?

There are a lot of things that could have contributed to a bad hatch with those specific eggs. I personally do not believe that them being bantam was a contributing factor.

Thank you. Yes, you're right. There are a lot of factors that I don't know anything about so maybe there was nothing else I could have done.

 

[Waterfaery]

You’ve done this way more than me (day 14 of my third hatch ever) but it seems like you’ve done a good analysis and ruling out various issues. I’m a quail ‘expert’, never taken chicken eggs to hatch, but there may be something in the turning early on as they are small eggs. I borrowed a nurture right 360 for my first hatch, I used the chicken rail and it wasn’t great for quail eggs, at least the outer ring. The smaller slots on the inner ring was great but the outer ring was a disaster. My second hatch I hand turned everything and it was great. I’m now using a cheap Amazon incubator that seems to be doing a good job (we’ll see on Tuesday!) but has a turner adjustable to quail. If your other eggs developed fine it wasn’t the incubator. They developed so at least they were fertile. It could be a nutritional or genetic issue (do bantams have any lethal color genetic issues?, quail have issues with homozygous silver). That they were fertile and developed makes nutrition a less likely issue (still possible but I’d expect infertile, poor or no eggs, mostly early embryonic death etc).

Thank you.

A lot of the losses were early but there were a lot of late ones too, so I'm wondering what sort of issues would cause both.

I'm not sure about lethal colour genetic issues but I do wonder about inbreeding. I've since noticed that the three chicks that did hatch have strange feet and I also don't know if they are normal or not for the breed. At first I thought they were missing toes but it's more like the toes sweep inwards in an arc and the outermost toes are held together with the middle toe instead of spread apart. I previously had foot and leg issues with my bresse birds which I discovered was likely because they had been inbred by previous breeders so I crossed in a fresh rooster and it seems to have made a difference. I don't know if these chicks need shoes but I'm going to look into it now. The toes are not curled, just curved sideways and the chicks are walking with no issue.

The last one to hatch is also quite a bit smaller and weaker and it has a bit of umbilical cord still stuck to it. I hope it will be ok.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I should have linked this earlier. It is a trouble shooting guide to incubation from Mississippi State. It may help you determine what might have gone wrong but there are a lot of different possibilities. It is a general guide, not all that specific. The main reason I'm linking it is to show how many different things could cause a problem.

Trouble Shooting Failures with Egg Incubation | Mississippi State University Extension Service (msstate.edu)

The only lethal gene I'm aware of in chickens is the tufts gene, originally discovered in chickens from Chile. It is from the same general region where the blue egg layers were discovered but were not related to the blue egg gene. I am not aware of any fatal gene related to bantams.

 

[Waterfaery]

I should have linked this earlier. It is a trouble shooting guide to incubation from Mississippi State. It may help you determine what might have gone wrong but there are a lot of different possibilities. It is a general guide, not all that specific. The main reason I'm linking it is to show how many different things could cause a problem.

Trouble Shooting Failures with Egg Incubation | Mississippi State University Extension Service (msstate.edu)

The only lethal gene I'm aware of in chickens is the tufts gene, originally discovered in chickens from Chile. It is from the same general region where the blue egg layers were discovered but were not related to the blue egg gene. I am not aware of any fatal gene related to bantams.

Thank you so much. That is a great link. I had come across it and a couple of similar ones such as this one. https://extension.psu.edu/programs/...es/supporting-subject-matter/trouble-shooting

I've been doing lots of research and trying to find a common cause for the various issues I had: blood rings and other early losses, later losses after day 14, chick DIS without pipping and minor deformities on the 3 hatched chicks. Most of them seem to be attributed to different possible causes. Of course, more than one issue could be to blame but it is strange to have things go badly at almost every stage and it would sort of point to a bigger, overarching issue I think.

I have double checked my incubator settings and all of the readings are accurate. Since it was a 100% hatch for my own eggs, I think I can safely rule that out anyway.

It must come down to something that was different between my eggs and the bought eggs. The only differences are:
- bantam vs large fowl eggs
- the conditions that were beyond my control before I took the eggs

So if I rule out incubator settings, some of the things that keep coming up are improper breeder nutrition, improper storage of the eggs and illness or infection from the hens. The eggs were not dated and the seller did manage to collect 13 eggs very quickly from just two hens. I wonder how long they had been stored and how. The possibility of illness does concern me. I think I will carefully quarantine these chicks to protect my existing flock. I would do that somewhat anyway with bought eggs but I might take extra precautions with these.

 

[Waterfaery]

I forgot to add, I did eggtopsy the late losses. There was the one that was alive going into lockdown and never internally pipped and three that I knew didn't look alive but I left them in just in case.

From my research of the development timeline of chicks within the eggs, I think those three died between day 14 and 16. The other one must have died on day 19 because it was in position to internally pip but hadn't absorbed any yolk. None of them were malpositioned.

 

[Kbug125]

I’ve just had my worst hatch rate ever - only 3 chicks out of 13 pekin bantam eggs! I’ve done lots of hatches but It’s my first time hatching bantams and I’m wondering if they need any extra care compared to large fowl or if the problem was likely the eggs themselves. I know that it must come down to either incubation settings, egg storage and handling, or breeder health and nutrition so I’m trying to troubleshoot it.

I’m using a Brinsea Maxi 24 Ex so fully automatic. I put some of my own large fowl eggs in with them and had 100% success with them so I think I can rule out incubator settings, unless bantams require different settings? After the first couple of days I did notice that the bantam eggs were rolling a bit far each side, between 120 and 180 degrees each way, so I changed the turning angle to suit them and they turned fine at closer to 100 degrees. Would overturning for the first couple of days cause a problem?

I normally dry hatch so that’s what I did and I’m wondering if bantams need higher humidity? It stayed in the high 30s to mid 40s throughout and I set it to 65 for lockdown, although most of the bantams were already dead by then. The ones that made it to lockdown were maybe 1g lighter than they should have been but I don’t know if that’s enough to make a huge difference and my scale only has a 1g accuracy anyway. I did think the air cells were quite large relative to the egg size but it is my first time with bantam eggs so I don’t know how normal or abnormal they were.

I had three types of losses. A lot were blood rings early on. A few were late quitters, sometime between day 14 and 18. The last loss was one chick that was definitely alive going into lockdown but never pipped internally. I will do an eggtopsy but it’s still in the incubator for now, just on the off chance, but there is no sign of life in it on day 22.

I didn’t know the seller but they live not too far away so the eggs were collected, not shipped. They came to meet me half way so I didn’t see the parents but they did send me videos of them and they looked well and in good condition. I don’t know anything about their nutrition. I do know that there are only two hens and the seller bought them as a (supposed) unrelated breeding trio from a different, larger scale breeder. They are pure bred lavender so I wonder how much inbreeding may be involved. They said they bought them last autumn and they were young growers at the time.

The seller I bought from seemed very honest, genuine and helpful but I have since researched the large breeder they bought the parent birds from originally and I saw that they were going out of business and selling off their stock around that time last autumn.

Some of the eggs were a tiny bit dirty but nothing unusual. I thought it was a normal, acceptable level of dirt. Lots of them had quite a patchy, blotchy look to the shell when I candled them before setting. I’ve seen that before with my first ever hatch which was shipped eggs and that hatch also didn’t do well, although not even nearly as bad as this. Are pekin bantam eggs usually very porous?

I’d really like to try again because I want to add pekin bantams to my flock so I’d love to know if there’s anything I can improve in the way I incubated them or if I just need to look for a different source. I will buy a scale with a higher accuracy down to lower weights but otherwise, is there anything else anyone can advise or does anyone have a theory about the most likely possible cause(s)?

Thanks so much for any help.

It seems that your low hatch rate with the bantam eggs could be due to a combination of factors, such as humidity levels, the egg's viability, and potential genetic issues with the breeder's stock. Bantams generally need slightly higher humidity, particularly during lockdown, so adjusting the humidity levels to 45-50% during incubation and 65% during lockdown might help. The turning angle issue, where the eggs were rolling too far, could also have affected development, so keeping the turning angle closer to 90-120 degrees is better for bantams. Additionally, the blotchy appearance of the shells and potential inbreeding from the breeder’s stock might have contributed to weaker embryos. It would be wise to consider sourcing eggs from a different breeder and invest in a more accurate scale to track weight loss for better humidity control.

 

[Waterfaery]

It seems that your low hatch rate with the bantam eggs could be due to a combination of factors, such as humidity levels, the egg's viability, and potential genetic issues with the breeder's stock. Bantams generally need slightly higher humidity, particularly during lockdown, so adjusting the humidity levels to 45-50% during incubation and 65% during lockdown might help. The turning angle issue, where the eggs were rolling too far, could also have affected development, so keeping the turning angle closer to 90-120 degrees is better for bantams. Additionally, the blotchy appearance of the shells and potential inbreeding from the breeder’s stock might have contributed to weaker embryos. It would be wise to consider sourcing eggs from a different breeder and invest in a more accurate scale to track weight loss for better humidity control.

Thanks so much for your reply. This was a while ago now but that is great information for next time. My daughter absolutely loves the bantams and we will definitely be wanting to hatch more again so I'll follow your advice if we do them in the incubator and I will absolutely find a different breeder.

Thankfully, the three that did hatch have turned out to be a trio. Of course I can't breed them because I suspect inbreeding already but I'm hoping the two hens will be good broodies for me for other eggs.