24 DAYS AND STILL NO SIGN OF HATCHING

[Anonymous]

Hi, i have some fertile eggs in my incubator, i candled them and all looked good except 2 that i disposed of. It is now day 24 and still no sign of pipping and no chirping noises or movement from the eggs so under advice from a friend i carefully opened one as she thought the chick may be stuck, when opened the chick was in fact breathing but the white lining inside the eggshell was stuck to the membrane and after carefully placing back in incubator to continue hatching on its own i have now lost it although i did notice that not all the yolk had been absorbed so im thinking that they are not quite ready yet, does anyone have any advice on what i should or shouldnt do next, thankyou.

 

[foxy]

The best thing yoy can do is make sure the humidity is between 60 - 70 and leave well alone
24 days is not unusual. I count the day the eggs are set (popped in the incy) as day "0". It is not uncommon for my large fowl to take 22 days sometimes more! My ducks are even worse, take ages to hatch, then when they do ducklings are full of energy 24/7! 07
Sometimes if the temp is set a little low they can take a couple days longer.
Fingers crossed (make sure you sit on yours!!)

 

[Anonymous]

Hi, thanks for replying, i will leave well alone but keep eye on humidity its currently 72 should i try to lower it or leave it be, i do know i struggled with temp for a couple of days in 2nd week as my boiler broke so my room temp dropped as we had no heating but i did try and adjust the incubator temp to compensate it and then adjusted down again once heating fixed so maybe this slowed the hatching down, how long should i give before interfering again as that really wasnt pleasant, thanks again

 

[foxy]

A rough guess, if the eggs are from the same source and same breed they should develop at roughly the same time. Yolk is absorbed around the 19th/20th day, then the chick starts manovering around the the egg, preparing for hatching - you normally start seeing "wobbling" at this stage or hear cheeps. I would say you might be around 24hours away if the yolk was only partially absorbed, so if they are viable you should start to see signs of "pipping" soon.

70% should be OK, I don't tend to raise the humidity until I see evidence of external pipping. Too high too early leads to mushy and wet dead in shells, they are too big to move around due to the high humidity. I don't think you have that problem as you mentioned the membrane was dry?

So bascially I would leave for another couple of days.