Mark1985
New member
hello, new on here, but not new to quail/birds at all. but having problems hatching eggs.
a number of years ago, i got 2 covatuto6 incubators for my xmas, and the first egg i used in them were chinese painted quail, i used 8 eggs from the pair i had at the time, and although all the eggs were fertile, and all pipped only a single chick managed to hatch and it was very weak and wobbly, and died a week later. i was given the advice that the humidity was too high and that i shouldnt have had water in the incubator at all until the last couple of days of incubation (i had the wells full of water from the start). so the next eggs to go in were bobwhite eggs, and i didnt fill the wells untill the last 2 days of incubation and lo and behold i had 100% of fertile eggs hatch. after several batches of bobwhite, i tried a couple of loads of japanese as i had plenty of them laying at the time. using the same routein as i did with the bobwhites, i got to hatch day, and only one or two eggs would pip and hatch. i left the eggs for almost a week after the hatch date and gave up and broke the eggs open to see what was going on to find that all the fertile eggs were fuly developed, and in most cases still alive but had not pipped or had not absorbed their yolk sacks, and would die withing minutes of the eggs being opened. some of the chicks were only about half developed, but again still alive, evn though the eggs had been in for in some cased 25 days. one last batch of bobwhite, perfect hatch!?!
i had to give up quail some years ago and recently dug out my old incubators, cleaned them up and got come chinese painted eggs. they were due to hatch 29/3. .... of 30 eggs, 3 hatched on time. i left the remaining eggs well alone until today. 5 infertile, 20 were full developed but had died before even pipping, and i found one that had started to hatch but got stuck, he is still alive and is still in the incubator recovering as he all crooked at the moment from being trapped in his eggshell.
can anyone tell me where i am going wrong with jap/CPQ?? should i just not add water at all?
a number of years ago, i got 2 covatuto6 incubators for my xmas, and the first egg i used in them were chinese painted quail, i used 8 eggs from the pair i had at the time, and although all the eggs were fertile, and all pipped only a single chick managed to hatch and it was very weak and wobbly, and died a week later. i was given the advice that the humidity was too high and that i shouldnt have had water in the incubator at all until the last couple of days of incubation (i had the wells full of water from the start). so the next eggs to go in were bobwhite eggs, and i didnt fill the wells untill the last 2 days of incubation and lo and behold i had 100% of fertile eggs hatch. after several batches of bobwhite, i tried a couple of loads of japanese as i had plenty of them laying at the time. using the same routein as i did with the bobwhites, i got to hatch day, and only one or two eggs would pip and hatch. i left the eggs for almost a week after the hatch date and gave up and broke the eggs open to see what was going on to find that all the fertile eggs were fuly developed, and in most cases still alive but had not pipped or had not absorbed their yolk sacks, and would die withing minutes of the eggs being opened. some of the chicks were only about half developed, but again still alive, evn though the eggs had been in for in some cased 25 days. one last batch of bobwhite, perfect hatch!?!
i had to give up quail some years ago and recently dug out my old incubators, cleaned them up and got come chinese painted eggs. they were due to hatch 29/3. .... of 30 eggs, 3 hatched on time. i left the remaining eggs well alone until today. 5 infertile, 20 were full developed but had died before even pipping, and i found one that had started to hatch but got stuck, he is still alive and is still in the incubator recovering as he all crooked at the moment from being trapped in his eggshell.
can anyone tell me where i am going wrong with jap/CPQ?? should i just not add water at all?